Interlude

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Welcome back!

We had a nice Christmas in Montepulciano and then traveled to Fiumicino the city where the Rome airport is located. We found a small hotel near the airport and went for a walk for lunch. We found a street with a lot of restaurants, but almost all were empty except for one. It had a line out the door and was called GePaGi. We waited in line and they finally let us enter. As we went in they took us to the back where there's a counter that looked like an American pizzeria. You could order pizza, but also different types of seafood. Nancy, of course, had to have the oddest assortment; pizza with octopus, pizza with squid, pizza with a creamy cheese and caramelized onion and a basket of fried squid. Turns out, it was the best fried squid we have ever eaten. John had a potato pizza and a good old regular cheese; he's not as adventurous as Nancy. Plus, we had some of the best wine we had in three months...go figure.

After lunch we walked around town. This was a seaport and Nancy spotted the statue of the mariner pictured below. She wants to know if that's a donut he's got down there.

The next day, we returned to the USA flying from Rome to Newark (just missing the snowstorm) then onto Orlando Florida: “The City Beautiful.” We’re here visiting Nancy’s sister and family for a short time and collecting our summer clothing before heading to parts south. Nice place to stay! Here's a picture of the lake at the back of Nancy's sister's house in the early morning.

For some crazy reason, John volunteered to make a Beef Wellington for New Years Day. It started out as a dinner for four that escalated to nine adults and three children.

John preparing the beef - Nancy's great nephews and niece -- John getting ready to cut the finished Wellington.

Yesterday we took a ride to Jacksonville to visit with friends: Denise and Jack and see their great new place where they just moved from New Jersey. Here we are at their pool and at dinner.

THAT'S ABOUT IT FOR NOW, EXCEPT...

Have you ever tried to post a comment to one of our posts?

We’ve heard from people who have tried to post a comment and were thwarted. So, John went to the company that provides the tools and hosting for the blog and hopefully figured out the problem. So, if you have ever tried to post a comment and it didn't work, try to enter a comment to this post so we can determine if the fix worked. (To comment, go to the bottom of this post and you’ll see, (right above the blue horizontal line) a place to enter comments.

We look forward to reading your comments, and John looks forward to hoping the comments actually appear after being on the phone with tech support for over an hour.

Have a great 2023 and we'll check back from somewhere south of the border in a few weeks.

Nancy and John