A Long Overdue Visit

After nearly two years since our last visit to the U.S. (November/December 2019), we finally were able to return to California in late September. It goes without saying that the vaccine gave us this opportunity to see family and friends and to attend a very special bat mitzvah.

We started out in Northern California where we celebrated the Zoe's bat mitzvah with her and Debbie. It was a spectacular event full of joy and friendship.

We had a terrific day hanging out with the Holl clan. My brother Adam gets a shout out for making the special effort to meet up with us as well.

We then spent a week in Kauai with Jeff’s parents doing absolutely nothing in one of our favorite places on the planet. It was nice to see that the north shore hasn’t changed too much since we were there last. We hung out with Loki – a very loony nene (the Hawaii state bird) – by the pool, played cards, ate well, and relaxed.

After catching up with several other special friends in Northern California we headed to Los Angeles to catch up with our “cuadrillo” – which is how the Spaniards refer to their closest group of friends. We always run out of time before we can see everyone we’d like to see. We are grateful to everyone who made the effort to work with our packed calendar of “meet ups.” And special thanks to our hosts with the most, Dena & Jay. We can’t express how much we enjoyed drinking good wine, eating good food, and watching the MLB playoffs live on a screen bigger than our laptops! We didn’t take a lot of photos in LA, but we did get one with our old ‘hood in the background.

These trips just fly by and before we knew it our return date arrived. We did get lucky as nearly every flight we took was not even close to full. Our next trip to the U.S. will be to Seattle in May 2022. It is hard to believe that we have not been back to the PNW since we left in July 2017.

Hasta pronto,

Shana & Jeff