Home Alone

Well, not exactly, but all of our visitors have gone, so it feels as if the house is empty again. We spent 3 of the last 4 weeks entertaining relatives and, although it was great fun having everyone here, now it's back to reality.

I have work next week, and this will be my first full week in about a month. I'm not looking forward to it, even though I've been keeping up with my email, more or less, as I know there will be a pile of undealt-with stuff waiting for me. Caroline starts school again on Tuesday, and is none too happy about that. Michael starts school the week after and, while he's ambivalent about the whole thing, Michele's pretty excited to have time to herself every day, even if it's only two and a half hours.

We've also (finally) booked a European trip. We're going to Vienna for a long weekend in November for the Christmas Market. This is apparently a tradition that dates back either 300 (according to historians) or 700 (according to marketers) years, in which the streets around the Vienna City Hall (the Rathaus, which would be an appropriate name for any government building, really) are transformed into a pine-scented, ornament-selling, mulled-wine-drinking wonderland. We've no idea what to expect - this could be either a really great time or complete bollocks - but we're really excited about the prospect of going to Vienna. For the weekend. How cool is that?

We're also planning a long weekend in Stockholm in October. Somehow, Michele and I always manage to travel in the off season. We went to Paris in October, Rome in November, Nevis in the summer. Nearly all of my trips to London were between November and March, and New Hampshire in early October isn't as colorful as you might think. But so far, we've been really lucky with our travelling. We've never had a bad time anywhere we've been, the weather has generally been good (though Paris in late October is really rainy and windy, so much so that the Eiffel tower was closed), and the tourists have mostly gone home. Maybe we'll make a practice of this off-season travelling. I hear Iceland in February is, um, Icy.