Winter-bound

If the Skaldi are overly fond of wagering, bickering and drinking among themselves, I learned why: When the men are winter-bound in the confines of the great hall, there is naught else to be done.

The Commons teemed with airily dressed mothers and unjacketed businessmen, the emotional gloom of a winter-bound populace exposed by the sun to be as seasonally fragile as ice.

But all the eating up of shoo-fly pie, and the cooking up of gauzy cumuli of pink candy, and the toffeeing of crab apples, couldn't hide the fact that we were winter-bound.

They walked for miles each day, in the churches, galleries and alleys of a winter-bound Venice largely free of tourists, happy in their own company.