Surprises in Portugal - Making Friends and Memories in Alcochete

Mark and Miguel walking through Alcochete

Surprises always happen when I travel.  Sometimes they are unpleasant surprises like missing plane connections or breaking an ankle in Thailand.  Sometimes they are wonderful surprises.  It can  be a toss up.   We traveled to Portugal in June 2015 and each day it seemed we had one good surprise after other.  I was almost afraid to mention them to anyone before the trip was completed for fear of jinxing the experience.  The trip to Portugal was one of the most pleasant in my memory from the ease of getting through security at the airport in Philadelphia right up until the ice cream service on the plane on our return flight home.

Mark and I visited Portugal for the first time in 2009.  We did not really know what to expect.  Portugal had never been on our radar as a location we had to see.  We went to Portugal to attend a meeting of the travel group we belong to called Virtual Tourist.  We went to spend a weekend partying with friends.  And in the end we also found a destination that really spoke to us and made us want to return. We did meet two people, Miguel and Gloria,  who became very good friends to us.  We kept in contact with them through Virtual Tourist and Facebook for the next six years always talking about returning and seeing them again.

When we returned to Lisbon, Miguel wanted us to visit the town here he lived named Alcochete.  The town is located across the river from Lisbon and is a bit isolated from the hustle of the capitol city.  We met Miguel after he finished work on Friday evening and he drove us to Alcochete.  We took time for a couple of beers and watched the sunset over the river from a small tavern on the waterfront.  Then we took some time to stroll slowly back through the town to see the church, the city hall and the side streets.  And as for all travelers it allowed us time to take many photos.

Igreja Matriz de São João Baptista. Church of St. John The Baptist - Alcochete

Miguel told he that he had had planned dinner for us at a restaurant managed by his friend Daniel.  He also told us he had ordered dinner for us that was prepared by Dona Conceição,  Daniel's mother.  As we walked through the town to the restaurant Miguel pointed out a sign to us that said Alcochete was celebrating it's 500th anniversary this month so we were there during a very special time.

We arrived at the restaurant and met Daniel who was very friendly and very glad to have us as his guests.  The meal was, in my opinion, the best we were served our entire stay in Portugal and we had a lot of very good meals.  Daniel told us there was a very special vintage of wine prepared specifically for the 500th anniversary.  The wine was not available to the public yet but he a bottle reserved for us.  

He told us this was the very first bottle to be opened so we would be the very people to taste this special vintage.  What a wonderful surprise for us.  The wine was very good.  The meal was excellent.  We finished the bottle of white wine and prepared for a dessert made by Daniel's mother when Daniel mentioned he also had one bottle of the red vintage if we wanted to try it also.   How do you turn down an an offer to be the first persons to not only taste the white but also the red wine made for this celebration?  To me this was one of nicest experiences I have encountered in all my many years of traveling.  So here is a toast to Daniel and his parents and their wonderful restaurant Don Peixe in Alcochete.

Larry, Mark, and Miguel toasting friendship and Daniel and his family

We had many surprises in Portugal.  All of them were good surprises.  But non surpassed this moment drinking the special vintage with our friend Miguel and our host Daniel.

Thank you Daniel for a very special evening

I will be writing about the food we ate in Portugal in another blog where I will give detail to the meal prepared for us at Don Peixe.  

Restaurant Don Peixe

I will be writing another blog about all of the food we ate in Portugal with special mention of the meal prepared for us at Don Peixe.

Switzerland Deja Vu

Larry 10,000 feet in the Alps on top of Schilthorn

 When I to took my first trip to Europe I was with my ex partner.  He and I had not done a lot of traveling in the past other than family vacations with our individual families.  He was scheduled to attend a conference for his job in France in the city of Marseilles and he asked if I wanted to join him on the trip.  All I needed was my airfare and money to spend.  The hotels would all be taken care of with his expense account for the trip.  He said it was a three day conference and we could plan a weeks vacation around the convention. I was so excited.  I wanted to see Paris.  But the conference is in Marseilles he replied to me.  Yes, I was aware that it was in Marseilles but Marseilles is in France and Paris is in France.  It did not matter to me that they were at different ends of the country. They were in the same country.  And I was not going to France or even to Europe and not see Paris.  So we went to Paris and then on to Marseilles.  For the next seven years we traveled to Europe each spring to attend this big medical conference in different cities and countries each year.  These were my first traveling experiences outside of the United States.  With each trip I was fascinated with the cities we visited.  I learned a lot about the culture and the history of each country we visited.  And with each experience I came home with a feeling of having discovered some new and wonderful.  Nothing seemed familiar to me.  I was a stranger in a strange land drinking up the knowledge and the beauty all around me.  I never felt at home.  It always felt foreign and fascinating to me.   Then I went to Switzerland.

Switzerland was never on my dream list of places I wanted to visit.  I never really thought much about Switzerland at all.  It was just Switzerland somewhere in the middle of Europe.  I was thrilled when his conference sent us to Italy.  It was a real fantasy to finally get to see ancient Italy.  Likewise with the Netherlands and Amsterdam, Cologne,  and Copenhagen.  But when he told me the conference was to be in Switzerland I was a bit let down.  I was glad to be able to continue to take  the annual trip to Europe.   But I was not thrilled about visiting Switzerland.  The only thing I really wanted to see in Switzerland was Piz Gloria the location where the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service was filmed.  

Piz Gloria high above the village of Murren

We planned the trip with little excitement.  We made arrangements to see Bern, Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and of course Piz Gloria.  The conference was in the remote village of Les Diablerets high in the Alps in the western French speaking part of Switzerland.

Les Diablerets

The strangest thing happened.  The moment we departed our plane in Geneva I was spellbound. Something felt very comforting and very familiar.  I could not quite figure out what it was or why I was feeling this way.  We boarded the train in Geneva and headed to Bern.  I could not stop staring out of the windows watching the villages and mountains go by. Switzerland  just captured my spirit and I felt completely at home.

Bern

The ten days passed  way to fast.  I wanted more time.  I did not want to leave.  To this day over ten years later I can still just close my eyes and be instantly transported back to Switzerland.  I find it strange.  I don't necessarily believe in reincarnation.  And I have no ancestors who came from Switzerland.  So there is no reason I should have felt so at home there.  But who knows.  Maybe I did live there in past life.  Or perhaps my mother's German ancestors originated in the Swiss area and migrated up to Germany and I felt some connection through them.

Perhaps it's because there is a Samson fountain in Bern.

Larry Sampson at the Samson fountain in Bern

The beautiful village of Murren

Or maybe I just fell in love with the beauty of the small villages.

I still feel like there is a piece of me in Switzerland.  I want to return one day soon and spend some more time there.  Maybe I will figure out the connection.  Or maybe I will be more confused.  But I do know there will be a certain satisfaction to be able to return and continue the journey.

Chateau Aigle

And I know that a glass of wine from the vineyards at Chateau Aigle is waiting for me on my return.  And perhaps there, all will be revealed to me.  Switzerland deja vu.  

Thoughts on Prague - Fred and Ginger - Wars and Bombs - And Learning to Travel

I visited Prague in 2004.  There is much about Prague that I really liked.  It's a fascinating city with a brutal past. Like a lot of European cities Prague suffered tragic bombings during World War II. During the Soviet era Russian troops and tanks marched down Wenceslaus Square to put down an uprising.  Two students set themselves on fire in Wenceslaus Square in protest of the Soviet invasion.  There is a very small memorial to these two men in Wenceslaus Square.  It's very small and close to the ground.  You can walk right past it without realizing it's presence.

The first student was Jan Palach. In August 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the reforms of Alexander Dubcek's government during what was known as the Prague Spring. The Prague born Jan Palach decided to make a sacrifice of himself in protest of the invasion. He set himself on fire, in Wenceslas Square on January 16, 1969. A month later (on February 25, 1969) another student, Jan Zajíc, burned himself to death in the same place. The memorial to these two men is very small and unassuming. If I had not been looking for the memorial I would have walked right past it without noticing it.




As I walked the streets of Prague I could not help but be amazed at the beauty and the history all around me. And I learned an important lesson from Prague. I was still a some what novice traveler and tourist in 2004. This was only my fourth time to travel abroad. I was still the wide eyed American walking around with his mouth open amazed at all that I could see. But Prague taught me to be aware of what I was looking at and try to understand what was being told to me.


The photograph on top of this blog is the Fred and Ginger Building in Prague. It is also known as the Dancing House. It does, at first glance, resemble Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers dancing.

The building is an example of deconstructivist architecture, with an unusual shape. But if you take some time and look closer the building looks like a structure that is falling down. The original building on the Ginger side was destroyed by a bomb during World War II. The Fred side of the building which is the neighboring house (with a small globe on the roof) was co-owned by Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel, who lived there from his childhood untilthe mid-1990s. You can almost see the bomb explosion as you watch the neighboring side collapsing. I first saw the building in a guide book when I was planning the trip to Prague. I did not read much about it's history or it's symbolism. But I was fascinated with the design of the building and could not wait to take photos of it.

As I continued walking along the water front past The Dancing House I saw this church with two very unusual steeples. I was very much fascinated with the unusual steeple with the two spires. It was unlike any other church I had seen in Prague. Prague has many beautiful churches and is known for it's skyline of spires. But this church just quietly sat in the background with no explanation. I took several photos of the church and unfortunately I did not take the time to find the name of the church. As I mentioned I was still a somewhat novice traveler. Unlike when I travel today with my digital camera and take hundreds of photos including street names and descriptive plaques on building, I was using film and had limited exposures. I took a bus out of Prague the following day to see an old castle in a neighboring town. I asked the guide on the bus about this church when we drove past it. He told me that a church sat in that location before World War II. It was destroyed by a bomb. He said when the church was rebuilt the steeples were designed to represent the point the bomb falling down to destroy the original building. When I walked back past the church the next day I could see the symbolism very clearly.




I learned a lot from my visit to Prague. I learned to look down for the small memorials on the ground that might be missed. I learned to look for meanings and memorials hidden in unusual architecture and church steeples. It really changed the way I travel and how I look at things in foreign locations. There is so much to see, so much to learn, and so much that can be easily missed if you don't take the time to ask questions and do some research.  

The People Across The Street

I love to tell stories.  I think I got this from my mother.  When family would get together Mom loved to tell stories about growing up.  She shared stories with me and my sister.  She told her stories to my daughters and to her nieces and nephews.   I do the same thing.  When they hear some of my stories people often tell me I should write a book.  Well I think there is a book of stories in every one's life so I don't think mine are anything special but some of them are unusual.

When I was a child growing up we moved a lot.  The first seven years of my life I think we moved almost every year.  We lived on almost every street in my little home town of Havre de Grace.  Finally at the age of eight when I was in the third grade my parents bought a house.  It was a new little rancher just recently built a half a block from the beautiful Susquehanna River.  It sounds like an ideal location and today the neighborhood is very attractive.   In 1960 it was quite different. Diagonally across the street was a large scrap metal junk yard.  Directly behind our back yard was the office and another part of the scrap metal junk yard.  And directly across the street were "the neighbors".

In a tiny two story brown shingle house lived Joe and Pearl.  Joe was a World War I veteran and Pearl was his common law wife.  Living with them in this tiny four room house was their nephew Willie.  Joe and Pearl were in their late forties or early fifties.  Their nephew Willie was probably in his mid to late thirties.  Joe was still fighting World War I in his mind.  He would wear his army uniform on Saturday nights and go to the dance at the VFW where he would sit in the back on the hall on a metal chair and listen to the music.  He seemed a little strange but harmless to anyone who saw him there.  Living across the street from him we saw a different side of Joe.  On Sundays he would bring out his four wooden flag poles and fly his American flags in front of his house.  In his uniform he would parade back and forth in front of the flags and yell across the street to us about the war, "The Big One" as he called it.  We heard all about the Kaiser, all about Germany, and all about how lazy and unappreciative we were of his war effort.  He yelled at the cars driving by, he yelled at anyone walking down to the river, and he yelled at the dogs running by his house.  He carried his rifle on his shoulder as he marched across the yard every Sunday.

Pearl was his common law wife.  She seemed more friendly than Joe but we knew she had to be a little off as she lived with Joe.  After midnight in the dark she would leave their house and walk all over town digging through trash cans for treasures.  I think she furnished their house with stuff she found in the trash.  She also wanted to share things she found with the neighbors.  She found a light for a bicycle one evening and gave it to me the next day for my bicycle.  I brought it into our house and showed my mother.  My mother was not thrilled with the idea but told me to be polite and thank Miss Pearl later.  I tried to turn on the light and it did not work.  My mother told me it probably needed a new battery.  She opened up the light and found it was full of cockroaches. She screamed and closed it up with a snap.  She ran to the back yard and threw it over the metal fence into the sheet metal junk yard behind our house.

A few days later Pearl saw me on my bicycle and noticed that the light was not attached to the handle bars.  She called me over and asked me where was the light.  I was scared and did not know what to say so I told her I was waiting for my Dad to attach it for me.  Pearl waited patiently for a few days and then confronted my mother.  She stood in her yard and yelled across the street to my mother.  "Where is the bicycle light?  I know you think your too good to take a gift from me.  GIVE IT BACK.  I will give it to Johnny down the street.  I WANT IT BACK."  Well my mother could not give it back because it was over in the junk yard some place.  Johnny down the street was my best friend.  I had told him the story about the light and we laughed about it as two kids would do.  Pearl called him over to her yard one day and told him I had a bicycle light and he needed to go get it from me.  John told me what she had said and we both laughed about the cockroach light and how he didn't want it either.

Willie was Pearl and Joe's nephew.  He was a grown man and he could not talk.  I never knew what his mental problem was but I would watch him and kept my distance.  He scared me more than Joe or Pearl.  He would stand in their yard and look across the street and just do a deep bizarre laugh.  "Huh huh" That was all he every said, just that deep throated huh huh laugh.  When Pearl would get angry at us, like she did over the bicycle light, she would sit inside her front window and we could hear her talking to Willie.  We could never hear what she was saying but we could hear her voice.  Then Willie would pick up little rocks and pebbles from the side of the road and bring them over to throw in our yard.

There was a small wood shed in the back of Joe and Pearl's back yard.  Joe would chop wood for their furnace and stack it up against the shed.  We would see Joe or Pearl go out to the shed from time to time but we never gave it much thought.  Then one afternoon we saw flashing light and heard a siren.  There was an ambulance over at Joe and Pearl's house.  We thought maybe one of them was ill or had a stroke.  The ambulance driver took the stretcher out of the back of the ambulance and carried it to the wood shed in the back yard.  Our curiosity was peaked as we watched with our other neighbors and saw a very old man being carried on the stretcher out of the shed and to the ambulance.  The old man appeared to be dead.  No one had any idea that there was an old man living in that shed.  We never found out who he was and never saw him return.

We never quite looked at Pearl, Joe, or Willie the same way again.  We moved a couple of years later. I remained best friends with John from up the street.  Today there is a beautiful large condo on the lot where Joe and Pearl's house sat.  I doubt anyone living there has any idea about the man who died in the shed that day or any of the other strange things that went happened on that lot.

First Impressions - Oslo

I did not have the best first impression of Oslo.  I was not sure what to expect.  Outside of elementary school Social Studies class and ninth grade Geography class Norway was not a place that I had thought about very often.  It certainly was not a travel destination that I had dreamed about visiting. My traveling partner at the time had a business meeting in Copenhagen he had to attend. We were looking at the map to see what other places were near by that we had not seen before.  So I found myself in Oslo.  We boarded the train from Gardermoen Airport to the city of Oslo.  We were soon put off the train in a little town called Lillestrom.  We had boarded the express train by mistake and they would not accept our non express train ticket.  Stupid tourists.

Littlesam in Lillestrom 

After our little mishap on the train we finally arrived to the train station in Oslo.  We walked out of the station to the little square in the photo at the top of this page.  I was not impressed.  The square was not very large.  There was a small unattractive tower in the corner.  And there was a man with a Middle Eastern musical instrument sitting in the square playing some very strange sounding music.  Nothing about this reminded me of anything I knew about Norway.

In spite of our little delay in Lillestrom we were still too early to go to the Bed and we had booked.  So we took some time to explore the square before looking for a taxi. The first thing we found was a large statue of a large anatomically correct tiger.  

This was not the first thing I expected to see in Oslo. So why was there a tiger in front of Central Station in Oslo?  There is a reason for it being there.  For the 1000th anniversary celebration in 2000 for the city of Oslo the city requested a bronze statue be placed in the square, Oslo's nickname is Tigerstaden or the City of the Tiger.  The name most likely came from a poem by the Norwegian poet Bjornstjerne Bjornson.  His poem "Sidste Sanq" was written in 1870 and describes a fight between a horse and a tiger.  The tiger represents the dangerous city and the horse the safe countryside. My first impression though was not a dangerous city.  It was just a small odd city and I was not sure what I really thought of it yet.  There were a few other odd statues in the square that I was finding interesting also but odd.

We finally found a taxi and gave the driver the address of the Bed and Breakfast we had booked.  Like everything in Oslo, the Bed and Breakfast was not quite what I had expected.  It was an old white clapboard house across the street from Frogner Park.  More about Froger Park a little later.  But needless to say I found it somewhat odd also.  We were a good ways out from the center of town, but fortunately there was a tram stop right in front of the house which we could use to go back into the city.  The house was clean and the owners were friendly.  But once more there was a lot of oddness around us.  We were in an upstairs bedroom without a lot of heat,  Our bathroom had a toilet and a bidet.  And oddly for some reason the owners used the bidet for a magazine rack.  It was filled with unusual Norwegian comic books.

Larry sitting outside of the Bed and Breakfast

Directly across the street from the Bed and Breakfast we wound Frogner Park.  Frogner Park is home to the world famous Vigeland Installation.  Although many times referred to as Vigeland Park, it is actually just the name of the sculptures in the park.  They were created by Gustav Vigeland between 1920 and 1943.   So what was odd about the park?  Every statue was a nude statue telling the  life cycle of man.

I have been using the term odd a lot.  I don't mean it in a bad or derogatory way.  I found Oslo any thing but unpleasant.  It's not the most beautiful European capitol I have visited.  But it's also not the least interesting.  The people of Oslo could not have been friendlier.  The owners of the Bed and Breakfast were very pleasant and made us feel very welcome.  I was growing to like Oslo more each day and finding it somewhat unusual made it all the more interesting.

So what odd things did we find in Oslo?  We found a memorial to Abraham Lincoln.  This honestly was the last thing I had expected to find in Oslo.  The memorial is located in Frogner Park.  The monument was created by Paul Fjelde from Valley City, North Dakota and was donated to the people of Oslo by North Dakota Governor Louis Hanna.

We took a brief train ride out of the city of Oslo up into the mountains to do some hiking and also to see the historic Holmenkollen Ski jump from the 1952 Olympics.  There was nothing odd about this.  This was something I had expected to see in Norway.  The train runs from Central Station in Oslo to the top of the mountain in Frognersteren.  There is a wonderful restaurant located near the Frognersteren station when I did get to sample reindeer which was something else I had expected to do in Oslo.

Larry hiking in Frognersteren

We left Frognersteren and hiked to the Olympic ski jump.  I had seen ski jumps on television watching the Olympic many times.  But that did not prepare me for what I saw.  The jump is much higher than it appears on television.  It's very overwhelming just to see the size of it.  And it wasn't just some cold looking structure.  It actually had a beauty to it's design.  I understand the original jump that I saw in 2005 no longer exists.  It was replaced in 2010 with a new and more modern jump that is considered to be one of the best in world today.  I am glad I got to see the original though.  There is something special about the history of it and also for me it was special because it dated back to the year I was born.

The original 1952 Holmenkollen Olympic Ski Jump in Oslo Norway

I left Oslo with a deep appreciation of the city and the Norwegian culture.  I had the opportunity to visit the Edvard Munch museum and to see his famous painting The Scream.  I spent time walking through the Akershus Fortress.   I meet some wonderful and kind people.  I learned to appreciate that finding something odd is a good thing.  First impressions are not always the best impressions.  It's the lasting impressions that really count.

Last impression of Oslo.  The beautiful Akershus Fortress

First Impressions - Paris

Bel Kaufman in her novel Up The Down Staircase tells the story of a young teacher's first year at an inner city school.  The novel opens with the teacher in her first day with her home room class.  She has planned to read them a brief essay she prepared on first impressions.  In the hectic and chaotic first hour of teaching with a room full of unruly students doing their best to distract the new teacher she never gets the opportunity to share with them her thoughts on first impressions.  Much like Sylvia Barrett in the novel I have unsuccessfully wanted to share a series of travel blogs on my first impressions of places I have visited.  And much like Sylvia Barrett I have found myself distracted and never had the time to finish my thoughts on first impressions.  I thought I would start out with my first travel experience in Europe, a trip to Paris.  However my introduction here of the novel and memories of reading the adventures of Sylvia Barrett have already distracted me and unless I use some discipline I will never start this series on first impressions.  I will just have to put Bel Kaufman, her creation Sylvia Barrett, the novel and the movie starring Sandy Dennis on the back burner and return to them some time in the future for another blog.  But let me start this blog on first impressions with the words of the character Sylvia Barrett from the novel.  "First impressions are very important".

This photo is the best representation of my first impression of Paris.  It was chilly, damp and rainy.  The skies were overcast for three days.  I took this photo from the top of the Arc De Triomphe.  When I returned home and back to work this photo became my background on my home and work computer.  I looked at it over and over and could never get over the thrill of seeing Paris for the first time.  I joined a web site called Virtual Tourist after the trip.  There was no Facebook at this time.  Virtual Tourist became my very first social media web experience.  This photo was my introductory photo on Virtual Tourist.  Although I have long since migrated from Virtual Tourist this photo still remains there on the first page I created.  A chilly,damp, rainy day in the city of Lights.

We booked a hotel on the internet which was a first for us.  We basically went into Yahoo and searched on hotels in Paris.  We found one that was affordable near Pere Lachaise Cemetery.  It was named "Hotel Modern".   I learned my first travel lesson with this hotel.  Don't believe the name or what they say on their web page.  If it's inexpensive there is a reason it's inexpensive.

The room was not great.  It was not even just OK.  It was pretty nasty.  But look at my face in the photo.  I was so thrilled to be in Paris.  The room did not ruin the experience.  I learned my second travel lesson also from this hotel.  You don't spend a lot of time in the room.  So don't over pay and don't fret if it's not beautiful.  The city awaits you.  Get out and experience it.

I will never forget my first impression of Paris.  It was magical and beautiful even on a rainy day.  I had my first taste of true French Vanilla Ice Cream.  It was the best ice cream I had ever tasted.  I had a scoop every day.  I had my first rump steak in peppercorn sauce, a taste I will never forget.  I knew very little about wine before going to Paris.  I drank very little wine and when I did drink wine it was usually White Zinfandel.  So you can imagine my shock and delight when I had my first true French wines.  I was surrounded with people speaking a foreign language.  I remembered from high school how  to say hello, good bye, thank you and Where is the library.  I could also say I fell down in the street.  So basically I spent four days saying hello, goodbye, or thank you as often as possible so I could feel like I was speaking the language.

Since that time I have traveled a lot.  I have learned a lot.  I now consider myself a seasoned traveler. I have been to many of the worlds great cities.  But nothing compares to that first moment in Paris.   I thought the magic might have been because it was my first trip overseas.  I returned eight years later and was a bit concerned.  I was afraid I would be let down this time.   I thought it might be different the second time around.  It might not as wonderful as my memory had made it.  But I had nothing to worry about it.  It wasn't me.  It wasn't because it was my first time to be in Europe.  It was magical because it was Paris.  I took the photo below when I returned in 2008.  It's the Eiffel Tower once again and taken from the top of the Arc de Triomphe once more.  And it was still a chilly, gray, rainy day.  And it's still Paris, my favorite city of all.

My first visit was in 2000.  I returned in 2008.  Next year is 2016.  I think it's time for another visit.

Christmas Tea

I love the Christmas season.  It's my favorite time of the year.  But I also find that I am easily depressed during the Christmas season also.  I don't enjoy Thanksgiving.  I find it too sad and depressing each year as I grow older.  There are so many memories of family and those who are no longer with us.  I try to skip right past those old photos of Mom's house with the roast turkey and the family around the table.  It's just too difficult remember my grandmother and my aunts and the rest of the family.  Once I get past Thanksgiving I jump right into the Christmas season.  I start watching Christmas movies.  I break out the Christmas CD's for my car.  And I look for something new each year to make me smile.

It's all very commercial and superficial. And I know this. But I love the trees.  The ornaments.  Even the silly Santa hats.  I try to find one thing for myself each year that will make the holidays brighter.  Two years ago I bought this silly Chevy Chase Griswald's Christmas mug.  Nothing spectacular.  Just a silly mug.  Now it's part of my Christmas tradition and makes me smile each year.  It's much better than the sadness of those old photos from Thanksgiving.  We have tacky Marilyn Monroe mugs that my daughter Danielle bought me for Christmas one year that we now break out on Christmas morning each year for our morning coffee.  There are special plates and dishes we set out for our holiday snacks and sweets.   Yes there are problems in the world and in our country.  And I know I am blessed and have so much to be thankful for that it's silly to get overly sentimental on the holidays.  But something stupid like a holiday mug with Chevy Chase on the front makes me smile.

Last year I bought a special holiday tea to have in the Chevy Chase mug.  It was called Christmas Cookie.  It was terrible!  After steeping it was a cloudy grey mess in mug.  It look like dirty aquarium water.  So the mug made me smile and the tea made me gag.  Not quite the experience I was hoping for.

This year as I prepared for the day to bring out my Chevy Chase Christmas mug I was hoping to find a better tea.  I found one called Cranberry Vanilla Wonderland.  I knew just looking at the package that this would be the one.  It had Cranberry and Vanilla and came in a beautiful Christmassy package.  It was perfect.  The herbs and probably the dye turned my mug into a beautiful red cranberry color unlike the mucky dirty aquarium water from last years selection.  It had a warm vanilla and cranberry scent to it that would be great for a candle also.  So today being a little stressed with finances for the holiday this year, trying to work Christmas spending into a tight budget, I sat down to chill and reflect.  With the cranberry vanilla tea, my holiday mug and a deep cleansing sigh I am ready to forge on and plan tomorrows holiday experience.  I am so glad I found the tea.  It could have turned out much worse.