After a glorious 8 days in Stockholm – spent with John’s family and my mom who visited from Namibia – we are happy to be home, even if it is slightly jet-lagged, exhausted and still trying to motivate ourselves into some sort of ‘spring-cleaning’ action before the new year hits us. I’ll upload some photos from our cold Scandinavian holiday, which included a visit to the ice bar, the opera and chopping down our own Christmas tree, but wanted to share our leaving and arriving trips with you first.
On Friday the 19th, New York had the biggest snow storm of the season. Just our luck, right? More than 300 flights out of the three airports around us were canceled and as you can imagine, the roads were such a mess. John had left me in the lobby of our apartment building while he ran to the street to hail a cab. Now here’s a couple of facts about taking a cab to the airport from Manhattan. There’s a set fee ($45 plus a $5 toll fee – this excludes your tip, of course) and no cabbie is allowed to refuse to take you to the airport. The first available cabbie John managed to pull over tried to negotiate a higher rate on the trip and when John refused, he grunted and pulled up in front of our building. John and I heaved our bags (laden with Christmas gifts for the entire world, it seemed) into the trunk before flinging our snow-sodden selves onto the backseat. The cabbie pulled away and by the time we got to the next avenue (about a 2-minute drive) he had already complained about having to drive out to the airport about 10 times. Then his light-bulb went on! He couldn’t take us as he’d definitely not be back in time for his shift change. He would have to pay a $25 fine. With a snowy-screech he pulled over and told us to get out. Now let me just state the obvious. The roads were covered with snow. Covered. Cars were driving buy, splashing sloshy snow up onto the sidewalks. I was pissed off. John removed one of our bags from the trunk, plopping it into the snow while trying to stay out of the way of a bus that was veering towards us. Before we could remove the other two bags, the cabbie pulled off! ‘Get that cab!’ John yelled and I started running after it.
Two streets later, me chasing a cab and in return being chased by an oversized bus, the cabbie realized his ‘mistake’ (did he really think I was going to let him get away with my suitcase in his trunk?) and stopped. He got out of the car and started pulling our second case from the trunk, dumping it in a puddle of slush, with me yelling at him. He was about to pull the suit-bag from the car when the lid of the trunk came down on his nose with a loud thunk. ‘Serves you right’, I thought. Karma is a bitch.
By this time John had managed to half pull, half carry our first bag through the snow to where the cabbie and I were in a stare-off and in the next instant we were stranded in the middle of Central Park West Avenue, with sodden suitcases, in the way of oncoming busses and with snow everywhere. Not impressed. We finally managed to flag a kind woman cab driver who took us to the airport, driving like an expert, and we got to our flight just in time.
On our way back on Sunday evening, our cabbie was way less aggressive. In fact, he was so passive that he kept falling asleep! I could see his eyes in the rearview mirror and kept coughing loudly, making banging sounds, anything I could think of to keep him awake! We finally made it back in one piece and my once unwavering trust in this city’s cab drivers have been dealt a little knock. I think I might have to skip the subway in lieu of a cab for the next couple of weeks, just to rebuild my confidence!
We arrived on Wednesday evening and there had been some snow on the ground from earlier in the week and we hurried indoors to the fire and some red wine. On Thursday morning when we woke up the air was filled with these huge snow flakes – pure magic! We spent the entire day on Thursday sitting around in our PJs and mostly watched Rebecca and Chet work their magic with the 24lb (That’s about 12kgs!) turkey – baking it for over 7 hours, basting it ever so often and producing the juiciest, brown bird I’d ever seen. Delicious! At around 4 the guests arrived and I prepared a traditional South African Jan Ellis pudding and warm custard for dessert. Rule number one of Thanksgiving…Kilojoules don’t count.