Thanks for your New Year wishes.

This card is for Ziners of the Jewish faith, wherever you are: http://www1.bluemountain.com/cards/box6844t/xjy5tzsjshamgc.htm

This year we will be home for the holidays - a novelty for us. The holidays start this Friday at sundown and we are leaving on the 15th - traveling to Germany and Greece before arriving in Israel on 4/Oct.

Sorry to say, Don and I don't share your enthusiam for the Pendini in Florence (other than its location, which is ideal). Our visit there was rather unpleasant, as we wrote in our Italy 1996 travelogue. In fact, that was the same trip with the bad experience at the Portoghesi in Rome.

Perhaps our expectations are different; our daughter and her husband stayed at the Ritz and were so disappointed they departed days earlier than planned. Maybe it is the low value of the Canadian dollar - but when we pay those prices, we expect something better in return.

That's why there's vanilla and chocolate! :) Cheers,

Linda and Don In Toronto http://www.thetravelzine.com