The Principessa stopped in at the Castle Bedelia for one of the Countess duBarry's famous breakfasts: eggs benedict with home fries.....delicious!

I don't get to see my daughter too often in the winter because she loves to ski and when New England is buried in snow starting in early November, she is gone to the mountains. Not content to merely go to ski areas with lifts, she finds challenges like Tuckerman's Ravine, a Mount Washington gap that only the most skillful skiers take on. First of all you have to hike up the ravine to get to where you can ski down. Next you read the avalanche warnings. Third you update your will....and then you go.

Christmas found her and her husband and a thousand other Santas on the slopes.

At night though, all the skiers come into whatever town they are near to participate in the sport of barstooling and the Principessa takes after her world champion mother in that sport. They were staying in this one horse town in the backwoods of New Hampshire one weekend. There was only one bar in town and the waiting line outside to get in stretched all the way to the town hall....about two blocks. You know the kind of town I mean; where you can always get a good seat to watch the Memorial Day Parade because everyone in town is IN the parade and there's no one to sit on the sidelines!

When they finally got up to the door, the bouncer let some of their party inside but my daughter was still on the outside. "If I was with The Countess, they would have let me in" she cried to her friends. So while she was visiting last week, she decided to take a few Countess lessons.

I told her it's all in the attitude.