Climbing, Crises and Cookies

Yesterday - June 6th - was an interesting day, to say the least. Two of my fellow students and I decided to take the cable car up the mountain and hike down. It was a beautiful hike, the trails were very well marked and it was a lovely day, though a little cloudy so we could not see as much from the summit as we would have liked:

Tirolean Rose

The Cable Car

The scenery was beautiful!

On the way down the hill we had a bit of a crisis. One of my hiking buddies, started feeling nauseous and had a sharp pain in her side. We made it back to Castle Brunnenburg - just as the clouds started releasing their abundance of rain - and told Dr. Redman about our health concerns. After careful observation we sent her off to the hospital, afraid it might be an appendicitis. It was a bit scary! But she returned later that night with some medication and a reassurance from the Italian doctors that she would be alright. Today she seems much better.

 Last night I also made myself dinner - gnocchi, which I had never tried before. It was very good!

And now we come to the very exciting part of my tale. Princess Mary de Rachewiltz loves peanut butter. For our tea today I made some peanut butter cookies for her from peanut butter I smuggled all the way from the United States! I hope she likes them. It was an interesting experience baking in an oven that has its degrees in celsius and substituting ingredients based on what I had on hand or could get at the Despar (the local "supermarket"). They do not typically carry brown sugar like the dark brown sugar we have in the states or molasses, so I used white sugar and honey instead. I tried one and it was pretty good! Hopefully Mary likes them. Today has been a restful sabbath day. I listened to a sermon online and have been doing homework and enjoying the sunshine. The weather is perfect in the mountains. After our rain last night it is cool and sunny today - lovely. 

Hope everyone has a splendid weekend! Good afternoon from Castle Brunnenburg!