All of Europe is in a cold-spell these days so this isn’t too special, especially since everyone expects cold and snow up here in the mountains of Switzerland. But it’s still a bit disconcerting when you check the weather report and see these numbers (on the upside though, it’s getting warmer!):

This morning I looked out the window and got excited to get out on the piste because the sun was shining and the sky was blue but then I checked the temperature (-25 C) and went straight back to bed because really, what’s the point of loosing your nose in exchange for a couple of fun runs on a snowboard.

In order to do at least a little bit of exercise though we bundled ourselves up and walked to the next village, La Punt, for some lunch. It was a glorious walk there, along the cross-country track and criss-crossing the slowly freezing Inn river at times.

On the way back the wind had picked up and we decided that it would be the prudent option to take the train back instead. Just a short ride but beautiful (and oh so warm…)

Last night we had the genius idea to go sledding because really, what else do you do on a freezing, snowy and windy night? This particular run goes from one village to the next, Preda to Bergün, on the actual road which is closed in winter time. Because it was so incredibly cold though we didn’t even take pictures (take off my mittens, are you nuts?!) until we got to the end of the run in Bergün and managed to warm our hands on some Glühwein at the ice bar:

Then to really warm up we went for an excellent cheese fondue, complete with pear and potato pieces to dip into the hot oozing cheese. Never has a meal been more warming or welcome.

Sunrise in the Engadin is supposedly at 7:51 but the sun doesn’t actually hit the valley floor until around 9am. So early mornings are rather dark around these parts. Luckily we don’t have to get out of bed until, well, until we feel like it really. (Sorry Curt…) But going up early to the slopes is always a good idea since the snow is better and there are less people around. Unless you’re going skiing in Zuoz on a weekday. Then it really doesn’t matter when you go because the mountain will likely be empty. Excellent!

The conditions were perfect for re-acquainting ourselves with our snowboards and getting our bodies used to some more strenuous exercise than walking to my sister’s house for lunch once a day.
I won’t lie: I fell on the first curve I tried to take coming out of the lift. I will however hold my bindings and stance responsible since after a lightening-speed fix up from my darling husband I managed to make it down the slope without falling too many times. Evil stance!

It wasn’t all falling down and embarrassement though – Conor rode a T-lift for the first time and managed to get all the way to the top! If you’ve never been on a T-life, it’s not easy on a snowboard. (He tried once before on a very steep T-lift and after falling off several times the guy at the lift told him he wasn’t allowed to try anymore. Instead he hitched one of those medical sled-beds to one of the Ts and had him sit on top of it to ride up. How I wish I had a picture of THAT…)

Back home, slightly worse for the wear and with a massive Muskelkater announcing itself for tomorrow, we’re consoling ourselves with the gorgeous views and hope that tomorrow will be another gorgeous day.

Oh and just in case you were getting any funny ideas about taking a sled down into town, fuhgeddaboudit.

Life in Chianti in January is very quiet. There are hardly any tourists, many shops and restaurants close and when a cold wind like today whistles through the vineyards everyone is happy to stay home in front of chimney.

Of course, if you have a dog to take care of then you do need to leave the fire every once in a while (grrrr). But we’ve had some spectacular days:

And when you have the cutest dog in the world, how can you say ‘No’?!

Not that you ever would dare to say ‘No’ because she will EAT you:

This weekend we were going to have a pizza party for a friend’s birthday but he got sick unfortunately (hope you feel better soon John!) and so we ate a lot of pizza by ourselves. Everyone got to make one, or at least choose their toppings starting with a “Pizza Maialona” designed by Piri:

A heart-shaped “Pizza Vegetariana” collaboration from the Schmitt sister’s:

and a lethal concoction dreamed up by Guido with Nutella, banana and grappa which he then proceeded to light on fire in honor of the absent birthday boy. Unfortunately the picture doesn’t do it justice because it was pitch black except for the pizza flambé:

The absolute star of the evening was Bruno though. If he keeps this up we can enter him into the Junior Pizza Olympics soon:

He even figured out a trick to reflect light into the oven using his pizza paddle to check if the pizza was done.

The "Absent Birthday Pizza" before it got the grappa treatment from Guido.

You’re still here? How lovely to see you. Thanks for not abandoning us yet even after this rather long dry spell here on Paws on the Road. But it’s a new year and new posts are just waiting to be put up so let’s do this!

New Year’s was a grand party with Elvis, Satan’s dog and Molly the jolly panda bear all in attendance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, he's ALIVE!

You will do as I command human. Bring me a steak!

Ratzeputz anyone?

The rest of our time here in Italy has been taken up by work and the occasional slack lining session with our nieces and nephew.

Their favourite part was just sitting on the line and bouncing up and down until they all fell.

We hope 2012 found you all happy and healthy and that you’ll continue to follow our little adventures on the road. So far it looks like our travels will be less far-flung this year but you never know what might come up. And just because we’ll stay closer to home doesn’t mean it won’t be exciting! First stop: Switzerland, where we’ll try to find out how exactly DO they get those holes into the cheese?!

We’re back in Barcelona and because it’s been a while we decided to check out the zoo last weekend. Our nephews are members so they’re on a first name basis with most of the animals but they still enjoyed introducing us to the pygmy hippo, the lion ladies and the new bearded vulture which has a much more menacing name in Spanish “Quebrantahuesos” (bone-breaker).

Adorable pygmy hippo, that could probably crush your skull without much trouble.

Hey, this is a family friendly site! We won't have any of that copulating stuff here, thank you very much.

...and here we have two juveniles in their natural habitat, clowning around.

Of course we knew this day would come but we didn’t think it’d be this hard to leave. There’s so much we still wanted to see and we only finished about half of our to-do list. (Not for lack of trying…)

Christmas is very much in the air with trees being lit all over the city this week and holiday markets springing up on every square. We celebrated the season in the most possible New York fashion by going to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Spectacular indeed:

Their synchronization is incredible.

Dancing furries, what's not to love?!

Even though our visa doesn’t allow us to stay on until Christmas, we got to enjoy the next best thing here: Thanksgiving. Sally and Racey invited us to their lovely home in Connecticut together with 20 other lucky ducks (mostly family) to eat turkey, pies and more side dishes than you can shake a stick at.

We started the day off with the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving parade.

We wanted to cross over into the park but obviously that was not going to happen...

The perfect setting for Thanksgiving day.

The table is ready.

The turkey gets it.

Thanksgiving dinner table

Meanwhile, back in the city the Christmas season is coming closer and closer. Decorations are going up everywhere and ice skating is the entertainment of choice.

Giant Christmas light strings in NYC

Free ice skating at Bryant Park

Putting the finishing touches on the tree at the Public Library

Endspurt is German for ‘final spurt’ as in “We’re almost entering our Endspurt in New York City”. A very sad thought but looking at the pictures and thinking about all the lovely people we saw and the wonderful food we ate and the marathon-theater-going that is still to come in the next two weeks (Hi Kuru!), we’re very happy about our stay in the city that only naps occasionally.

The sky tram to Roosevelt Island

All of last weekend the top part of the Queensboro bridge was closed for filming of the new Batman movie. That would have a been a great time to take the tram!

At Fort Tyron park which surrounds the cloisters up in northern Manhattan.

The entrance to the cloisters museum. If you've never been, it's quite a pretty spot. Entirely built from looted cloisters, mostly French. Fun stuff!

The Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park

Visiting the Occupy Wall Street Library in Zuccotti Park. Not sure what happened to the library now that the park has been cleared... EDIT: Evicted like the rest of the protesters. http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/occupy-wall-street-library-evicted_b42238

The rage in New York is currently the cupcake. The trend is huge heaps of frosting in bright colors and packaging with more material than you could possibly recycle in a week. We have visited the numerous cupcake hangouts and distilled the best places for a New York tourist to sample. First on our list, by amount of fame, was the Magnolia Bakery. We bought four trial cupcakes including a peanut butter one that Nora declared the best cup cake ever on the spot. I think at the time of this proclamation she was affected by the late hour and more importantly having spent the previous hours eating and drinking at The Spotted Pig.

Magnolia’s cupcakes are decent enough and they have the best packaging for giving them as a gift but they are not the most delicious. Their fame is more attributed to their baking book then to their actual baking. The frosting is too abundant and sweet, overpowering the actually perfectly baked cupcake batter. Billy’s Bakery also suffers from the same mountains of frosting and sweetness and the cupcakes themselves are not nearly as moist. In fact it takes a dedicated connoisseur to tell that Billy’s is not Magnolia, they even finish the frosting topping in the same swirly motion leaving a spatula hole in the middle. Both are a chain by now and have several locations but both can most easily be visited on foot in the West Village.

Some just want to know which is the best cupcake so let’s get to the point: the winner (so far) is a tie between The Little Cupcake Bakeshop and Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Sunshine Cupcakes has a varied selection of cupcakes and other deserts along with tasty coffee to make it a charming place to have a sit down and relax a bit with some sweets and an afternoon coffee. Their prices are also the cheapest by far. The Little Cupcake is a little more hectic due to bigger crowds but they have some edgier creations. Just the right level of traditional cooking mixed with crazy like a blue velvet cupcake that looks like it had an affair with some smurf ice cream. Should you be a caffeine maniac, their craziness extends to their coffee menu: they serve drip coffee with three extra shots of expresso dropped in, it’s called appropriately The Insomniac.

I have never met a cupcake I didn’t finish until my visit to Red Velvet on 72nd street. The regular vanilla/chocolate combination was dry with hard frosting. Their special combination, Devil Dog, which is a chocolate cupcake and marshmallow frosting was thick and gooey. The peanut butter one was sugary and old. All four cupcakes tasted like they’d been left behind the exhaust of a running car for 20 minutes to give them a slight gasoline-carbon taste.

All of the bakeries seem to have a fixation with red velvet cupcakes, from Red Velvet who use it in their actual store name to Billy’s who refuses to bake a red velvet cupcake but feels the need to announce this on their door to avoid questions by the red velvet fans. Billy declares that all red velvet is made with coloring and therefore they can’t bring themselves to sell it. It can also be made naturally with beet root but that of course is more trouble than it’s worth, so indeed most places probably use coloring. (It also comes out tasting a bit funny as Nora and Ido found out a few years ago in Miami.) The interesting thing about Billy’s and their all-natural approach is that their frostings are a vivid neon bright color.

Are you Jewish and in need of a kosher cupcake? Head down to the East Village for Baby Cakes. It’s a small quaint cafe and truly all natural with options for Vegan’s and options for those with celiac disease, who need to avoid gluten. Unfortunately their cupcakes are a bit dense and dry. They do have several interesting choices and it’s nice that they carter to people who can’t have a regular cupcake but unless you need to, this is not a cupcake to seek out.

Honorable mention must go to ButterLane cupcakes. We can’t honestly grade them as they were a bit dry and uninspired but we had just come out of visiting the new Big Gay Ice Cream Shop next door and we might have been a bit over-stuffed with sweet as well as presentation. ButterLane seems to do well from catering and larger groups that can rent a room to make cupcakes together. We might have to give them another shot.

Today was the New York Marathon, the 42km race that runs through all five boroughs, closes some major New York streets and brings about $350 million in “economic activity”. That’s a lot of activity…

The first woman runner at the 30km mark. She didn't win though.

Winner of the marathon, Geoffrey Mutai, around the 36km mark.

Closely followed by the rest of the front runners.

Water, Gatorade and lots of bananas.

Is that really the right motivation?

Team Achilles runs with handicapped and wheelchair runners. There were some amazing racers there.

One of the many handcyclers in the race

Not sure how interested the dogs really were in the marathon but they sure looked stylish on the sidelines.

Lunch with a view

Almost lost our official photographer there. Luckily, Conor came to the rescue.

And how do you feel about this race?

Gorgeous weather, spectacular foliage, crazy runners = great day

This was probably the happiest runner we saw.

After the finish line, walking it off in heat blankets.

There were some pretty crazy characters running the race from a bride and groom to Batman and Robin. But our favourite by far was Christoph Niemann, the Abstract Sunday columnist for the New York Times who ran, drew and tweeted the marathon. See the results here.

A week ago the weather was 24° C and walking about the city in a T-shirt for October was a strange yet pleasant event. We embraced it, by taking the opportunity to visit The Brooklyn Botanical garden, it’s free on Tuesdays.

This week the weather cooled and the trees finally started changing color. My sister’s family came to visit and the day before yesterday we showed them the mean streets of New York.

Yesterday we  visited Central Park, Mila enjoying the ducks and other animals.

Today they got to enjoy a whole different weather.

Like summer in England, this fall in New York lasted two days (or two and half depending on who is doing the counting).

Fall has very much moved in. The trees are doing their best Indian summer work, our heating is running full time and pumpkins are on every corner.

The subway station for the National History museum is decorated with all kinds of flora and fauna mosaics.

The Bonsai exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

Remember those giant sequoias from our post about the redwoods? This is the same tree. Just pocketsize.

Someone moved a piano into Washington Square Park and entertained us for the afternoon.

Kids (and adults) making gigantic soap bubbles in Central Park.

Once again exploring the Highline (if you're coming to visit us, get ready for this...)

Enjoying the last rays of sun on some Highline loungers.

A riot of colors, even in the city.

One of the many tributes to Steve Jobs sprinkled around the city. These optical illusions are on a fence in Soho. (Thanks for the tip Gordo!)

Young Steve Jobs

Old Steve Jobs

When you stand in front of the fence, you don't see either picture.

Some curious sculptures (literally) on the subway

Hilarious and over-the-top = oh so New York. This girl was walking towards us on the street, talking on her gold phone attached to her purse (where it connected to her cell phone).

A riot of colors outside the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

Halloween decorations are well under way, these are in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

At the Central Park reservoir. Just beautiful.

Actually the title of this post should probably be Summer in New York instead because it was absolutely gorgeous outside today. Sunshine, blue skies, temperatures in the high 70s (around 27C)… Definitely not what we expected here in October.

We went to Central Park with Mauricio and Andrea for a bike ride. Of course the rest of New York had the same idea and there was a huge line to rent bikes but for some reason we got VIP treatment (probably because we spoke Spanish with the guy) and he offered to let us jump the cue if we would take a tandem instead of two bikes. Hell yeah!

We did a tour of the park up to 110th St and back and then went down to the Hudson and rode along the river and the park they’ve built all along the waterfront. (Obviously, the pictures in this post are ‘guest curated’. Thanks Mo!)

It was a clever enough idea: have a bunch of mildly attractive 20-30 somethings walk around with a box of your product, pretending that they just bought it. Hopefully make a bunch of other 20-30 somethings insanely jealous so they’ll go out and buy the same product. In reality though, it started to look a little freaky after we saw the fourth person with this carton stroll past us in Chelsea Market:

Notice how the box doesn't seem to weight anything? Those things are HEAVY in real life.

(Apologies for the crappy quality of the pictures. Taking stealth evidence is a lot harder than it looks!) There was also a suspiciously high number of young single men toting the same box and while it’s always nice to see men getting down and dirty in the kitchen, none of these guys seem the type…

Of course, now we are giving Breville even MORE free marketing by writing about this but it was just too strange and evil marketing genius not to document. Stay classy Breville.

Fernando and family came for a visit over the weekend and those few hours that we didn’t spend eating or drinking, we whiled away at FAO Schwartz. For the kids, of course.

Since it was Sunday, they had a few extra demonstrations of games and toys going on and also two guys who played the Big piano.

Afterwards, quite by chance, we stumbled upon the annual Polish parade. For this, 5th Ave had been shut down for about 20 blocks.

The actual parade was a bit disappointing since it consisted mainly of very small groups of people walking very far apart from each other followed by ear-drum shattering Polish rock musicians on sadly decorated floats. And what these guys where doing there in kilts we never figured out.

But at least Miss Polonia Manhattan got a smokin’ hot ride:

Afterwards we had to gather strength again and stopped by Eataly, the ginormous food empire Mario Batali has built in the Flatiron district.

Downstairs is a huge market where everything from fruit and veggies to meat, fish and wine is sold. Most of it Italian in some form or other.

Upstairs is the somewhat secret Birreria restaurant which isn’t really secret at all, they just make it tricky to get to. The food was excellent though and one of the house beers (Gina) was pretty tasty too.

If you’re not a big fan of ‘reading’ then this is going to be your favourite post yet. The picture to word ratio is going to be out of this WORLD! So let’s start:

Our apartment is close to St. John the divine, a beautiful and gigantic cathedral just north of Central Park. Next week (October 4th), animal mass is coming up which means people bring their dogs, cats, gnus, what have you to get blessed. We heard one year a guy showed up with an elephant. Will keep you posted.

The garden around St. John the Divine

Had some very spicy but oh-so-tasty fried Chinese chicken at Grand Sichuan on the Upper East Side. Tasty and cheap, what’s not to like?!

Our brother-in-law Guido would have laughed at this plate and asked for more chillies.

We also spent way too much time wandering around the FAO Schwartz store.

I don't know what's more disturbing, looking at the dolls without arms or the batshit price tag.

The intricacy on these figures is quite crazy. No idea how long it took them to make this.

The World Trade Center memorial was also on our list this week. It’s going to be quite beautiful one day but right now, with construction blaring on all sides and surrounded by security personnel, the effect is a bit lost sadly.

Two memorial pools were built in the former footprints of the towers, surrounded by all the names of those who died in the attacks.

That's pool number 2. In the background you can see the formerly called 'Freedom Tower' going up. It will be HUGE.

They’re not kidding when they call New York the city that never sleeps. There is something going on ALL THE TIME! To avoid going crazy trying to do it all or moping about opportunities missed, we just keep telling ourselves that you can’t dance at two parties at once and anyway, the one you’re at is always more fun.

Apparently fall is slow season for theaters so a lot of plays offer 2 for 1 deals on their tickets. We’ve been to see “Book of Mormon” which was hilarious and really as good as everyone says it is. (I can’t stop humming the songs and every time I hear a doorbell now I start singing “Hello, my name is Elder Price..”).
If you have been living under a rock for the past year, “Book of Mormon” is a musical by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of “South Park”, about mormons and the church of jesus christ of latter day saints. You can listen to the opening number here.

The museums are also offering some wonderful exhibits although so far we’ve only made it to the Met (which is so huge it should really count as more than one museum but they had a lovely bar on the roof where we had drinks with a million-dollar view) and a gallery in the Village to see the portrait of an acquaintance. It was quite funny to see the painting with the subject next to it:

Today we also went to the Affordable Art Fair which is going on all this weekend. We met an incredible body paint artist there, Emma Hack. She paints people to blend in with their background and sometimes you really have to look for the person, it is so incredibly well done. She was painting a woman while we were there:

Restaurants are so plentiful in this city that it’s almost painful to eat at home because you know there are so many places out there you want to try. This weekend we managed to at least make a slight dent into our list: The Spotted Pig (for pork belly and pig’s ear salad, both ridiculously delicious), Magnolia bakery (for possibly the best PB&J cupcake in the world), Blue Ribbon (for some very tasty brunch fare) and Billy’s (for some comparison tastings to Magnolia, thanks Cindy).

We haven’t done too many touristy things yet (tomorrow, really, for sure!) but we did make it down to the Highline the other day just in time for sunset. The highline is a park built on an old elevated train line originally used to get freight trains off the city streets. It roughly runs from 12th St along 10th Ave all the way up to 30th St. The tracks are still visible in most places and have been incorporated into the park design with some beautiful results.

The houses along the line are mostly old but new buildings are cropping up all over and being close to “the line” seems to be the major selling point. Not that I blame them, it really is a great place to see and be. Walking along it you feel like you’re in a futuristic Hollywood flic and any minute a flying car is going to whiz past. It is such a fantastic way to get through the city (we walked 16 blocks without even noticing it since you never have to worry about cars, lights, curbs or lampposts), makes you wonder why they don’t have these elevated walkways/parks in more places!

These loungers are actually on wheels on the tracks. Not sure if they still move though.

And as mentioned, the sunset was pretty spectacular too.

“A few months in NYC” has been on our travel list for so long that it feels almost surreal that we’re really here now. Thanks to Yiko we now call a 5th floor walk-up in Morningside Heights our home, at least until December.

It’s only been a week but we’ve already had plenty of New York moments: on our first night we passed a grocery store on the way to dinner and I went in to ask when they close to see if we’d have time to stop by for some milk afterwards. The cashier looked at me like I had just introduced her to my pet unicorn and said “Never”. I imagine this was followed by a roll-of-the-eyes and some grumbling about tourists but I didn’t stay to check.

Then a couple of nights ago we went for dinner with my friend Christine and afterwards for a quick massage at one of the ubiquitous Chinese massage parlors. Because really, what else would you do at 10pm on a Friday night in the Village?

Of course this weekend was also the tenth year anniversary of 9/11. We didn’t want to get too involved in the festivities (because, yes, that is almost what it felt like) so we stayed home on the day. But we did catch the free concert from the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center the night before, purely by chance, and it was beautiful. Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony was very appropriate for the moment.

We have also paid our respects at the navel of it all, the center of the city, the square of all squares, the core of the Big Apple. (The etymology of which, by the way, you can find here, if you’re interested.)

On our last weekend in Caracas we went to lunch at Recoveco, a restaurant high up on the avila, the mountain range that divides Caracas from the sea. We’d heard about it from Luis because the chef is a friend of his. (After lunch we learned that he really just wanted to come because his friend has a slightly questionable culinary past and he was curious what he’d put on the table. Thanks man…)

Luckily José Nicolás came through with flying colors. We feasted on a Venezuelan interpretation of gazpacho, “pabellon” in form of an Oreo, veggies fresh from the garden at our feet, shrimps, scallops, grouper and rib-eyes. For dessert we could choose between three different kinds of ice-cream (basil, rosemary or ginger – all delicious) with some rather unfortunately wimpy chocolate crêpes. Each dish was paired with a Chilean or Argentinian wine and some very fine rum to round things off.

Even more exciting than the food though was the drive to the restaurant and the wonderful views with which you’re rewarded once you make it. There are no signs to Recoveco anywhere on the incredibly steep avila road since technically this is a national park and you’re not supposed to run a restaurant there. Of course, this is Venezuela and people could care less what they are and aren’t supposed to do. But still, there is no address given on the website and only on the day before did we receive a confirmation email with a hand drawn map and some vague directions to their actual where-abouts: “…take the first dirt road on the right marked by blue rocks and follow until the end.” There were a couple of forks in that road so ‘follow until the end’ was slightly vaguer than we would have liked for a description but we did find the place without a hitch in the end.

The only customers for lunch that day, except for a journalist from Ocean Drive magazine who left quickly after we arrived. Taking the pork dish with him, evil.

Exploring our lunch options

The kitchen, with possibly the best view in the world.

As is implied from the title of this post, we have since moved on from Venezuela and find ourselves in a somewhat new situation: we will be staying in the same place for 3 whole months! It’s almost too crazy to get your head around, isn’t it? We’ll be in New York City until the beginning of December so if you have any tips for food, sightseeing, drinks, shopping or other shenanigans, send us an email. (Maybe we should temporarily rename this blog to “Paws in the Big Apple”.)