people frequently say that they are tired after reading our holiday letters and I laugh- but then I read Mac & Niti's letter each year and then I know what our friends mean-
just one quote - “dinner in Delhi, lunch in Frankfurt and breakfast in Rio” LOL - so read on and find out that we are not the only ones addicted to travel and getting out in the world - GO NOW!
Dear Friends,
2014 –
Where did it go?
It
whizzed by so quickly, it seems, while we were busy packing and unpacking bags!
Mac was quite serious about enjoying every bit of this “bonus time” as he calls
life after 60. We travelled like never before and LOVED every bit of it.
In
February we celebrated the wedding of my nephew, Kunal. A large contingent of
us flew to Kolkata for the wedding and brought back his beautiful wife Shradha.
It was great fun and a beautifully organized wedding, tailor-made to please the
young couple.
The
Leiden-Sarin Moot Competition took us to Bucharest in March. A madly exciting 9
hour Grand Bazar stop-over was made at Istanbul. That place is so magical!
Dublin,
it was in April, for a beautifully organized IGAL meet. Met up with old friends
and new.
June saw
the family fly-out to the US, to Los Altos to be with Nikhil & Divya and
the children for the summer. Having all our children and grandchildren together
made it a very, very special holiday indeed. One of those ‘never to be
forgotten’ and ‘definitely to be repeated’ type!
In
August we packed 50 kilos of Marigold flowers into a suitcase and flew to
Brussels for the wedding of Helena’s daughter, Alexandra, and tried to give it
an ‘Indian touch’ by hanging a curtain of flowers at the entrance of the venue.
It’s so wonderful to be able to make a young bride’s dream come true, who had
seen this in India! We had a mini AIJA meet there, and even though it poured
through the ceremony, it was such a beautiful wedding.
Exhausted
with all the travel and needing to be around for the Blood Bank, I took a rain-check
on Mac’s 5 day trip to Chicago in September, for his 35th year reunion at
Northwestern Law School. Being the gregarious creature he is, he had a super
time and came home loaded with wonderful stories and experiences (and flower
bulbs on my special request!!).
By the
middle of October, we were feeling too ‘rooted’ so flew off to Rio-de-Janeiro.
As Mac posted on Facebook : “dinner in Delhi, lunch in Frankfurt and breakfast
in Rio”. We are truly blessed by the most wonderful friends we have gathered.
They so enrich our lives! 3 wonderful nights with Patricia & Guilherme in
their 5 star mountain resort where they spoiled us rotten with their
hospitality. We 4 drove back to Rio for the IGAL meeting – What can I say about
Rio! It’s exotic and enticing and when you are there with all your close
friends, you can’t but have a marvelous time. The Brazilian hospitality was
outstanding and we could see the
personal touch at all the events.
From Rio,
a skip and jump took us to Florence for an UIA meeting. More adventures and
discovering new places and trying local food with lovely friends.
This
year the Blood Bank Society completed 50 years of social service. Throughout
the year we had various functions to mark this momentous landmark. It
culminated in a function at the Governor’s residence where we honoured donors
who had donated blood more than 50 times. There were almost 250 people.
Photographs of them receiving the award were printed there & then and put
into their certificates. A grand function to mark a grand landmark!
The cherry
on the icing of the cake was the end of the year when Nikhil and Divya and the
children flew to India via Hong Kong. Jokingly they said “why don’t you meet us
in Hong Kong?” and we did! 3 wonderful days with the aforementioned nephew and
wife and all of us. Did as much sightseeing as one can with 4 very jet lagged
people. Again the whole family gathered for the winter holidays, this time in
Chandigarh. Could really not have asked for more! We must have done something
good in our past lives to deserve all this!
We wish
you all a wonderful New Year and look forward to great meetings in different
parts of the world.
With lots
of love
Mac &
Niti
You may recall that I had posted about Mac's Chicago visit back in the fall- here is the post in case you wanted to remember it more clearly:
http://semifreelife.blogspot.com/2014/09/ok-so-we-are-older.html
http://semifreelife.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-visit-from-mac.html
And now I am off to work on our own next trips- finally settled on Holland & Belgium for late May with a stop in NYC for friends and family.... and we do hope to meet up with our cousin Iddo over the summer in Ireland or the UK.... more on that later of course.... places to go - things to do - people to see.... "GO NOW!"
