L'Escalade!

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Originally uploaded by hellomizk

We have had quite the weekend!

On Friday night we went to Mr K's annual work Christmas party, only this time it was in CH and not VA. The food was wonderful - we had truffle ravioli and I hit a new personal milestone- I ate a fishy food and didn't hate it! Before the pasta was served we had salad with thin slices of smoked salmon on it and, having fortified myself with a couple glasses of wine, I decided to brave the fish. I speared a minuscule sliver on my fork, wrinkled up my nose, and nibbled the corner off - before enthusiastically eating the whole thing and chasing it with the rest of the salad. Who knew! I'm going to pick up some smoked salmon from the grocery tomorrow and continue to experiment with it...

On Saturday we met up with one of Mr K's visiting coworkers to spend the day in Geneva and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves visiting the city for the first time during one of their biggest festival weekends of the year!

"L'Escalade, or Fête de l'Escalade (from escalade, the act of scaling defensive walls) is an annual festival held in December in Geneva, Switzerland, celebrating the defeat of the surprise attack by troops sent by Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy during the night of 11–12 December 1602. The celebrations and other commemorative activities are usually held on 11 December or the closest weekend." Thanks, Wikipedia!

Before we made it to the center of the festivities, we stopped to grab some nice hot street vendor food to tide us over for a couple hours. I had the most wonderful tamale - it was just perfect. Chris had a ham and cheese panini and we had CHURROS for dessert! After this snacking, we went wandering around and found ourselves surrounded by cannons, kids in costumes, adults in "historical garb" (costumes), guns, vin chaud, more cannons, and pigeons. Part of one street was blocked off and filled with snow and people were skiing down it.

Mr K posted several pictures on his blog as well - go check them out!