Friday, January 30, 2026
Sue and the girls started the day with a visit to the pool, enjoyed by all. Then it was into the village for the annual bout of souvenir shopping. Viv had finished the book she was reading, so I bought her one by the same author…and a book for me about the origins of mountaineering (about which later).
Princeton, January 23, 2026
Our annual week at Trapp starts on Sunday…but so does a monster storm sweeping across the country. Dire forecasts of snow and ice have made us change our plans, and we’ll leave a day early and make our way north on Saturday. After debating our options—Saratoga Springs, Middlebury, etc.—we decided to stay in Hanover, with a decent rate from the Hanover Inn.
Hanover NH January 24, 2026
We had an easy first part of the drive: not too much traffic, and no slowdowns at all. We were routed over the GW and then up the Henry Hudson, Sawmill, and Hutcheson to the Merrit / Cross through Connecticut. It was a cold day, but the car did well with weather in the teens. We reached the supercharger at Rocky Hill, CT around noon, and went, not without a bit of trepidation, into the Arch 2 Sports Bar and Grill. It was a real sports bar, with about a dozen tv’s, pinball, pool, you name it. The staff was immediately welcoming, and we got a delicious turkey sandwich to go. $12.95 bought us an enormous sandwich and a mountain of fries.
We had charged enough to make it to Brattleboro with energy to spare. The weather was turning colder, though, and as we drove north form Springfield, the wind started blowing hard against us. At the charger in Brattleboro, the computer told us that we needed 60% to get to West Lebanon, NH: 63 miles away! It was five below zero when we started, and, sure enough, we had only 10% when we arrived at West Leb (as we Greeners call it).
We weren’t sure whether to use the valet parking at the Hanover Inn, but when the valet told us they had chargers in the basement garage, it was a done deal.
The inn has undergone a total renovation, and I have to say they’ve done a beautiful job. The public areas are modern and inviting: the entrance hall is dominated by an enormous granite table fabricated locally.
When they needed to redo the floors, a dozen burly workmen failed to make it budge: it weighs 2800 pounds. An air jack finally did the trick.
The rooms are large and very comfortable now. Ours had something dear to my heart: a picture of President John Kemeny’s car.
Kemeny was a remarkable man. He was a Hungarian Jew whose family fled to America in 1940. He earned his BA and Ph.D. at Princeton, where he was Einstein’s principal mathematical assistant. He was appointed full professor at Dartmouth at the age of 27 and went on to create the BASIC programming language with his colleague Thomas Kurtz. Kemeny was one of the “Martians,” a loosely affiliated of brilliant Hungarian Jews who remade mathematics and science in the United States; the group included Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and other assorted Nobel laureates. He was above all a beloved president of the college, continuing to teach undergraduate classes and welcoming students into his home.
I have two personal anecdotes about Kemeny. During college I worked as a waiter at the Bull’s Eye, a steak house in Hanover. Kemeny was a frequent guest, as was Jonathan Mirsky, a leftist assistant professor specializing in Chinese history. Whenever Mirsky saw Kemeny, he hailed him as “Comrade Kemeny,” which was either bold or idiotic (Mirsky was denied tenure and went on to have a prominent career as a journalist, winning the award as UK journalist of the year for his coverage of Tienamen Square in the Observer. In spring, 1972, after Nixon declared an escalation of the already lost war in Viet Nam, the eastern college student poured out one last time in protest. My buddy Jim Kloppenberg and I organized the lobbying effort in Washington, and went to the President’s office to ask that students not be punished for following their conscience and missing class, tests, and assignments. Kemeny not only agreed, but pulled out his personal checkbook and gave us $500 for student bus fare!
We were going to walk around a bit, but we weren’t dressed for -5 temperatures, i.e. no woolen underwear. So we opted for an early dinner at Molly’s, the big eatery on Main Street. We had no real expectations, but the food was excellent. Sue had a really good burger while I had French Onion soup and an excellent Mac and cheese made with Jasper Hill cheese.
We followed dinner up with a glass of wine at the bar in Pine, the restaurant at the Hanover Inn. We had very cosy seats right in front of the fire.
Sunday, January 25, 2026
Sue indulged me in a fit of nostalgia: we had breakfast at Lou’s, the hangout for locals and students that opened in 1947.
It doesn’t seem to have changed since my student days, which means for more than fifty years! Sue had a muffin while I had a single pancake. I thought I was being careful, but the single cake flopped over the edge of the plate. Really good!
It was wonderful to leave the Inn with a fully charged car. We were on the road by ten, since snow was predicted by noon. As we drove north, the snow got deeper, and views started to open out to the Green Mountains as they marched south.
We stopped in town and got groceries at Mac’s before heading up the mountain. Our guesthouse wasn’t ready, so we went to the Lodge for a warming cup of coffee. We met two nice couples, one with an infant; brothers who had grown up coming to Trapp and now returned with their families. As we sat and sipped, the snow started to fall. And by 2 PM, our house was ready. First things first!
It was a beautiful day that passed into a beautiful evening, with snow falling through the trees around the house. We stayed in and had a simple dinner of spaghetti with a glass of the Meiomi Pinot Noir that I had picked up at Mac’s. A bit fruity, but not bad for $19.
Stowe, Monday, January 26, 2026
We woke to a foot of new snow; and it kept snowing throughout the day.
Sue swam in the morning, and we had a light lunch at the guesthouse before heading out for a ski. The skiing was phenomenal, with soft snow in the tracks and on the paths. It snowed heavily throughout our ski, which made for an absolutely memorable day.
We topped it off with tea and cookies in the lodge; the molasses / ginger variety was especially good, but they were all delicious.
We had changed our reservation at Hen of the Wood in Waterbury from tonight until tomorrow, which was a good move, since it snowed through the night!
Sue cooked a lovely dinner with provisions we had picked up at the Butchery in town: sautéed cod, sautéed potatoes, and a delicious, tangy beet salad.
Stowe, January 27, 2026
While Sue went up for her morning swim, I did a bit of photography around the house.
After a spot of lunch we headed into town to do a bit of shopping…I had forgotten my suspenders. No luck on that front, but we did have a nice walk around town!
You’d think a guy could find some ski suspenders in a town like this, but no!
When we got to the Outdoor Center for our ski, the lot was jammed. We soon found out that there was a regional high school ski race on, and the Vermont parents had showed up to cheer their kids on. The skiing was spectacular: packed fresh powder. There were more skiers than the day before, but it still felt quiet as we glided along. We made it out to Picnic Knoll in no time.
I was feeling so good that I decided to give Russel Knoll Track a try. The first righthand turn went well, but then comes a sharp lefthand downhill turn….that I have never made! And I kept my record intact. Rather than sit down, I thought I’d take advantage of the mountains of soft powder, and so I simply skied into a snowbank. Which worked well for me, but much less well for my right ski, which delaminated and essentially broke a third of the way down. Bummer!
As I trudged back down Sugar Road carrying my broken gear, nearly every skier who passed stopped to check on me. I felt fine, but hated the fact that I was messing up the trail walking with my ski boots. Another skier suggested I call the Outdoor Center and ask for a lift; which worked a treat. The director of the ski program, David Rye, was soon whizzing toward me on one of the big snowmobiles that Trapp uses to groom the trails. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of me with an orange safety helmet for my first ride on a snowmobile.
I thought that replacing my skis would be a snap. I thought wrong. Although every local skis on waxable skis, it turns out they get them online from a place like the Ski Rack in Burlington. Trapp had nothing. And a series of phone calls revealed that there was precisely one pair of skis in the entire town, at Mountain Ops.
When Sue returned, we had our tea and cookies and headed up the Mountain Road. The skis they were holding for me at Mountain Ops, though, were skinny racing skis with proprietary bindings; I had hoped to simply transfer the bindings on my broken skis and be able to use my current boots. Oh well.
The roads were still a bit iffy, but we headed bravely to Waterbury for our first dinner inside the new Hen of the Wood (we had eaten on the patio several years ago and were disappointed; the food was probably the same, but we missed the unique charm of the old restaurant in the mill house).
This meal restored our faith! We started with the spectacular old standby, Parker House Rolls. They were followed by an equally spectacular sweet potato pasta with a short rib sauce. Sue had a wonderful hanger steak, while I had the best duck breast ever; both were accompanied by smashed potatoes with an aioli. We drank well, too: I had the house pinot noir from the Willamette Valley, Sue a glass of a nice Bordeaux. And we finished the meal by sharing an unusual and unusually tasty take on Sticky Toffee pudding.
The new dining room had looked a bit sterile in the daytime: it’s in a converted bank building. It glows warmly at night, though, and is really quite lovely.
We were sitting at the Chef’s Counter, with the grill man tending a huge mound of glowing charcoal and the saucier tending as many as six pans at a time.
The young man cooking front of us was lovely! A Vermonter, he had majored in wildlife management at the University of Maine. There were no jobs in his field in 2008, and he became something of an itinerant. He worked for Thomas Keller in Napa for eight years and eventually came home to find work at Hen of the Wood.
Stowe, Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Not a lot to report! We kept up our routine, with Sue swimming in the morning while I read and wrote. I drove her up for the swim and then walked home, hoping to stretch out the leg. What a pile of snow there is up here!
My leg was pretty messed up—stiff and sore—so I opted out of skiing, and Sue followed suit. A very relaxing afternoon ensued. We did take another walk through the snowy wastes!
Sue reprised her delicious “chicken and dumpling” soup for dinner.
The Jennings / Hafetz clan arrived about 9:30 and came directly to us. We spent the remainder of the evening catching up. What a great atmosphere there is in front of our fire!
Stowe, Thursday, January 29, 2026
After breakfast at our place, the Hafetz / Jennings branch headed for Spruce Peak for a day of downhill skiing. Spruce Peak is the smaller mountain across the road from Mount Mansfield; it has gentler runs better suited to new skiers like our girls…and their mother!
Reports at the end of the day were very good! Viv is already doing some parallel turns and she and her dad went down a blue trail. Ingrid is also ahead of her mom, who was on downhill skis for just the second time, but both of then apparently did fabulously.
I rented some waxless skis that I really liked: Atomic Savors, a skinny, rather short ski with pretty aggressive scales. I was able to climb well and the glide was much better than I’d anticipated. The transition from my waxed skis was painless and, truth to tell, waxless skis are just fine for the current state of my knees. We did our usual loop, with Sue finishing on Russell Knoll while I worked on my snowplow on Fox Track.
Dinner was at the Bierhall, in an annual tradition. We had a table in the glassed-in space that runs around one side of the hall. And the chow was as usual: pretzels with cheese sauce, and variations on Chicken Schnitzel with Rotkohl, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut. The kids love it there, which makes everyone like it even more.
Back at the ranch, we finished up the chocolate cake that Connie had made for Sue’s birthday.
Newark and London, Monday, November 10, 2025
Despite the government shutdown, despite the cancellation of 26% of the nation’s flights occurring at Newark Airport, despite the apparent radical absence of flight controllers, and despite the fact that we were flying with United…our flight took off on time and landed early! We had been apprehensive about flying in difficult times, and would have cancelled if we wouldn’t have had to swallow theater tickets for Othello and The Importance of Being Earnest.
As it turned out, it was a snap: up at 5, in the car at 5:15, at the airport parking at 6:10, though security at 6:40, and sitting comfortably in the United Club having breakfast soon thereafter. The flight went very fast. I sat next to a very nice guy who had spent his life in theater; he had grown up in Riverhead, his husband in Phoenix.
After the usual two-mile march through Heathrow, we were soon on the Elizabeth Line and heading for our hotel. It’s a short trip, and we splurged on our favorite hotel, the Londoner. They gave us a nice double upgrade, and our room looked out over the skyline (photo credit: Susan Jennings).
From left to right, you see the domes of the National Gallery, the London Eye, and, through the reflection, the Duke of York Column at the foot of Regent Street.
We had a nice bite in the Residen’t Lounge at the hotel, and then strolled through the still bustling streets around Piccadilly Circus…until, ready to drop, we returned home to plot our further adventures.
London, Tuesday, November 11, 2025
After a good night’s sleep and a splendid breakfast, we were ready for a walking day. The tube brought us to Warwick Avenue, within a short walk of “Little Venice,” a charming pool at the confluence of two canals, the Grand Union and the Regent’s.
The canals branch off in three directions, and we were a bit unsure of our path, but a very friendly inhabitant of a houseboat soon set us right. That’s his boat, the cheery blue one on the left.
This first stretch of the walk was very pleasant, chockablock with “narrowboats.”
The canal was built in the early nineteenth century under the general directorship of the architect John Nash, who seems to have built every Regency structure in England. The ideas was to connect the already existing Grand Union Canal, coming from the west, with the Thames by building a canal in a broad arc around central London. This presented a number of difficulties as the canal passed through built up areas. The solution was to build long underground tunnels for the barges. Here is Sue looking back from the point at which the canal enters the tunnel.
Once the water goes subterranean, walkers are forced up onto a series of streets through light industry and council estates. Which made for signs of urban decay here and there.
We soon approached the fringes of Regent’s Park itself. On our left, across the canal, rose a long series of enormous villas.
These are new additions to the park, built in historicizing styles in the late 1990’s and 2000’s. They sit on land owned by the Royal Estate but the structures themselves belong to such welfare recipients as the Saudi Royal family.
The path leads on through the park and by the London Zoo.
Just before the Feng Shang Floating Princess (!), we turned off the path and headed through the park up to the top of Primrose Hill.
The skyline from the top of the hill is justly famous, with sweeping views from the London Eye all the way east to the City.
From the hill we walked down into and through Regent’s Park, headed for Queen Mary’s Gardens.
As you can see, the sun peeked through the clouds for the first time today.
Sue was delighted to find dozens of rose varieties still in bloom. Me, I liked the trees, and especially this glorious Dawn Redwood.
A bit of a walk and a bit of a tube ride brought us back home for a cup of tea and a snooze; we had walked about seven miles, not bad for the first day in.
Late afternoon found us popping in to the National Gallery; we can see the back entrance from our window. We plan to come several times, and we started with some of our favorites.
We spent the time until the museum closed in the large room that houses the unparalleled collection of Paolo Veronese. The four Allegories of Love are particular favorites.
And the grand historical paintings are stunning.
But perhaps best of all is the intimate ‘Dream of St. Helen.”
My legs were more or less shot after lots of walking and museum standing, so we cabbed it to our restaurant, a repeat visit to Noble Rot Mayfair. Food was excellent: sea bass crudo and rabbit in mustard sauce for Sue, cod cheeks with a Ponzu Mayonnaise and Venison with pumpkin and chestnut for me. We each had a glass of bubbly: a Langham Estate from Dorset for Sue and a Gonet Champagne 2019 for me. Sue did well with a nice glass of burgundy, but I was lured in by the promise of a 60 year old wine from Portugal. It was remarkably fresh and somewhat savory but finally nothing special.
An evening stroll up Piccadilly brought us home and….to the blog.
