Italian Opera on the Road

Stan and I had a great Christmas with Ben, Jocelyn, Kristian and his family. We had three snow storms while we were in Colorado and had the pleasure of watching Kristian barbeque tri tip in a blizzard for Christmas dinner. No big deal!!! Kristian's dad Murray was a wonderful host and we felt right at home with 20 people, all cooking,laughing and eating up a storm. With festivities over, we saw Jocelyn and Kristian off to Chile, then Ben to Santa Barbara and left to return to New Mexico. We stopped for the night in the Colorado border town of Trinidad. It's claim to fame was coal and Batt Masterson as sheriff. Apparently he would go out to the bars after work, get hammered and shoot out the lights over the store fronts on the way home. Being a gracious person, he would go back the next morning and replace the light bulbs. We checked into a hotel and decided to go have an Italian dinner at Rino's. It's in a really cool old stone building with lots of velvet drapery and old wooden arches. We walked in and the hostess asked us to wait a moment before taking us to our table. There was a man singing Italian opera, with all his heart and soul. Not only that, he was good! It turns out that all the waiters, owners and owners' sister sing. We had a fabulous dinner and every 10 minutes of so, someone would grab the microphone and sing Italian, country western or one of the old standards. We finished our dinner and hung out until everyone had sung. So if you're ever in Trinidad.......