January first found us in Longwood Gardens, having gotten an AirBnB and spent NYE with our friends in West Chester.
On the 8th we had lunch at Jean-Georges on the 60th floor of the Four Seasons to celebrate our anniversary.
M got a present of a little golden chair and a nice bourbon from her colleagues to celebrate her just concluded term as department chair.
On the 27th we arrived in Saint Thomas for a stay in an Airbnb on Sapphire Beach to relax, take in the start of our coordinated sabbaticals, and spend D’s birthday snorkeling (which we did in Saint John in Trunk Bay on the 29th). We had a great time, ate great and drank well, and swam around little fish several times, in Sapphire Beach. On the 30th we did a food and culture tour in Charlotte Amalie, which was less impressive than we had expected but still gave us good food and photo opportunities.
February
Still in Saint Thomas, met up with Anthony and Barbara for a couple of dinners and a day spent in Magens Bay, as well a day at our beach.
On Valentine’s Day we had dinner at Estia and went to the Love concert of Lyric Fest.
March
We visited to NYC to have lunch with Jill, Cameron, and Owen, and visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Jill and Cameron. Later we had dinner at a French restaurant by Central Park.
On the 14th D’s former student Rachel visited us and we took advantage of an unusually warm day to go with her to the Morris, where she will get married next May. She had only seen the Morris with a covering of snow and was delighted by the early spring blooms.
On the 16th we went to NYC again to see a matinee of Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera. Before the performance, we had brunch at the Met and after we walked to the new location of the Molyvos restaurant and had a nice dinner there, before going to Long Island to hang out with Dominick’s family and friends for a party on the 17th. We returned home that night.
On the last day of March we celebrated Easter at Suzanne’s, with many friends, including Charlotte.
On April 3 we celebrated D’s former student Olena’s PhD at Ooka Doylestown.
From April 5 to 9 we were in Cincinnati, hanging out with D’s former student Sierra and friends Acadia, Rachel, Anna and Matt, and Rob and Phyllis, and catching the total solar eclipse on the 8th. During the visit, we also paid a visit to Louisville KY on the 7th to taste some bourbon and tour Copper & Kings and Angel’s Envy distillery.
On April 18 we went on a chartered bus trip organized by Lyric Fest to see the New York premiere of Lyric Fest’s commissioned multimedia show Cotton at the 92nd Street Y.
On April 30, D attended the annual awards party of the department and made photos, and then May arrived with the start of our big trip to Belfast and Scotland.
May
We flew from Philadelphia to Dublin, leaving on May 1st and caught the train to Belfast, arriving on the 2nd. We stayed at the Flint hotel near Belfast City Hall, which was under construction and noisy. We visited some local attractions with Rob and Jelena, had a fabulous lunch at XO, D worked a little with R, R threw his back out on Monday the 6th and was unable to come to D’s talk on Friday the 10th (which went well), and we decided that our planned joint tour of Scotland would not work, so M and I went to Scotland only for a few days at the end, after hurrying to get an Airbnb in Belfast for the additional days we would stay there. During the extra stay in Belfast, D got to work on the new paper with R, while R was resting on his back. The visit to Scotland, where our base of operations was Glasgow, was fine. We visited Stirling Castle and Loch Lomond on a bus tour, tasted a whole lot of Scotch, and ate some good food at Marshanta in Glasgow and Fishes in Edinburgh, where we also walked around the Royal Mile and went up the hill that has the Scottish National Monument, with an excellent view of the entire city.
In June we went to a gala for the Wilma Theater, guests of Mike and Eva, and we met there Charlie and Nicki.
For M’s birthday in July we went for lunch to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where they had a Mary Cassatt special exhibition and the ceramic dishes were made by Arcadia students based on the exhibit. Lunch was at the new restaurant of the museum, Stir, designed by Frank Gehry and featured food from Mary Cassatt’s own cookbooks and journals.
The highlight of August was a short trip to Rhinebeck with Suzanne, Kevin, and Charlotte. We had a spectacular Airbnb and we showed them all the good places we know there: Poets’ Walk, the market, shopping (D got shoes). We also went to the garden of the building that houses the economics department at Bard college, and admired the views.
In September, we hosted Sierra who gave a talk at Temple and started planning a project with D. The day of her talk, Charlie and D took her to dinner at Estia. We took her to Washington Crossing State Park and to the Yardley Inn for dinner the day after the talk and topped it all off with soft serve ice cream in Glenside.
October highlights include an amazing Aurora display over our own backyard, a visit to Shawnee with Charlie, and D’s delivery of the 7th annual Nobel lecture organized by the chapter of the international economics honor society in D’s department, of which D is the advisor. In October we also had new windows installed in the house.
In November we had a nice visit to the Morris Arboretum with Suzanne and Kevin, a visit by Olena before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving at Suzanne’s, dinner at Ooka Doylestown and drinks at Frost with Sierra and Jacob, and the Astra Lumina outdoor show with the Finamores.
December brought the end of yet another semester for M and for D. For M, the highlight of the semester was the Art of the High Renaissance class she audited and the paper she wrote for it on Antonello da Messina’s Portrait of a Young Gentleman. On the 13th we attended the album release party for Any of Those Decembers, a cantata commissioned by Lyric Fest (of which one part we supported financially ourselves), with most of the board of Lyric Fest as well as the composer and poet present. We went to Princeton on Christmas Eve and had a great dinner at Elements, then stayed at the Nassau Inn. On Christmas Day we took the train to New York City, where we had a lovely Christmas dinner with Anthony, Barbara, April, and her dog Cascade. On December 28th we went to the naming ceremony for Mike and Eva’s granddaughters.
You can enjoy an album with photos from these activities, selected from more than a thousand photos, here.