Honeymoon, Day 2, May 24: Quick trip to the shore.

Breakfast was included at Il Borgo. In addition to the fruits, juices and other foods I posted earlier, there was a spread of fresh breads and local cheeses, and another table with yogurt and granola. The waitress would greet us each morning with, "Buon giorno. Cappucino o espresso?" I could get used to having cappuccino every morning.

We'd decided we wanted to visit the seaside once on the trip and with rain forecasted in the days ahead, we took the opportunity of this sunny day to drive to Vada, on the western coast.  We knew we were close when we started seeing palm trees, and stopped to take a picture of this little shrine.

There were few people on the beach as it was still a little before the season started. Which meant plenty of space for us to walk.

I make a point of wading in every ocean and sea I visit for the first time, so I was able to add the Ligurian Sea to my list. You can tell from my face that it was a wee bit chilly!

It almost doesn't feel like a summer vacation unless you can walk barefoot on the sand at some point.

Scattered around on the white sand were these curious blue creatures. We weren't sure if they stung, so we avoided them. However, we did a little research later and discovered that they are velella. Also called "by-the-wind sailors," they have a transparent chitinous sail that helps them skim along the ocean's surface, until an unkind wind blows them ashore to die. They are related to jellyfish but do not sting. The article I read said they have a neurotoxin that could be irritating if you touch your eyes or face after handling them.

After our walk we headed back to find a place to eat, passing this old stone water tower.

We ate by the marina at the Hotel Bagni Lido, where we sat over-looking the water.

I had linguine with baby clams and my husband had pasta with a seafood assortment - octopus, squid, mussels and a weirdly huge prawn. I'm not sure why I mention who had what - we always split whatever we order. Both were delicious. We got a bottle of local white wine to go with it.

After lunch, we headed back through Tuscany toward the Chianti region.

We stopped in Volterra, a bronze age settlement that has been inhabited for almost three thousand years. Stretches of the walls in this city were built in the 4th century B.C.

The Fortezza Medici was a fortress built on the highest point of the hillside, completed in the 1400's. It now houses a maximum security prison. I can't even imagine what it would be liked to be locked up with so little natural light.

We did a little shopping at some of the crafts stores to bring home gifts for the kids. Volterra exports a lot of alabaster and since I'd bought a pair of silver Celtic knot earrings in Galway, I decided to make that a tradition and bought a pair of alabaster earrings. I also picked out an alabaster and metal pendant to use as a Christmas tree ornament, another travel tradition. We got a gelatto violetta to eat as we strolled around.

Next we drove toward San Gimignano, which had been recommended to us by a coworker of my husband. We took one look at all the tour buses and milling hordes of people and kept driving. Which was serendipitous, because we were getting hungry and stopped instead at Castellina in Chianti. It is another charming Etruscan-era walled city and probably our favorite. I loved that there were kids casually kicking a ball around in front of this 16th century church, San Salvatore.

The friendly shopkeeper at the wine store, Le Volte Enoteca, helped us pick a bottle of wine to take back to the hotel and we asked him for a recommendation on a place to eat and also where we might buy some chocolate for later. He walked us across the street to a little store and introduced us to the shop owner there. We tasted samples and ended up with two blocks of dark chocolate, one with cherries and one with pear, walnuts and cinnamon.

We walked around for quite awhile before dinner, though the Via delle Volte, a stone tunnel along the outer wall of the city.

It was originally a pomerium, a sacred and military boundary. There were windows in the tunnel that looked out over the hillside.

Originally the Via delle Volte was open-air, but later enclosed as homes were built against the outer defense wall.

As it grew dark, we walked back to the suggested restaurant, Il Cantuccio. We settled into a table in this cozy little place and watched a young man who worked in the kitchen take a few minutes to sit down at a table and enjoy a plate of pasta and a glass of wine. It seemed like a good omen. Our waiter was a friendly guy who sang as he worked and kept a glass of wine for himself on the bar.

We had ravioli l'arancia and crespella primavera with zucchini and a cream sauce and a bottle of Chianti.  Again, everything was delicious. You might be noticing a theme here.

Then back to Il Borgo for the night. We could not resist the fluffy robes provided for us, and settled in with our wine and chocolates.

Honeymoon, Modern Life in an Ancient Village

I decided to do a little aside post, not about a particular day but about the place we stayed the first four nights. Because look at it! It sits up on a hillside in the Chianti region, about 600 meters above sea level.

Vèscine was a thirteenth century Etruscan village that had fallen into disrepair over the years. It  was bought by the owners of a couple of wineries in Tuscany and turned into a hotel property.

All the original structures were preserved, keeping the medieval architecture intact. The buildings are connected by bricked alleys, following the old roadways.

I was particularly taken with the tile rooftops with multicolored fungi.

Lots of small flowering succulents grow in patches in the crevices.

At one end of the old village is the restaurant where we had breakfast every morning. You can see the deep-set widows in the very thick walls.

The other end has the pool. Okay, not medieval, but the view from it!

This angled walkway lead up to our building, which housed two suites. Can't you just picture these tiny roads in use hundreds of years ago?

Our room was this half of the building, with its own little balcony. We had the room farthest from the main buildings.

Our room was light and airy during the day and cozy at night. We kept the French doors open during the daytime because we were surrounded by a wooded area on two side.

Looking out from our windows we could see some of the other buildings and the green hillside.

This turned out to be one of those lodging choices that far exceeded our expectations. Which is especially sweet on a honeymoon.

Honeymoon: Day 1, May 23rd, Arriving in Italy

We had a flight delay out of Atlanta the day after our wedding, so we had sushi at an airport restaurant. Fortunately, we got to the Paris airport in time to catch our connecting flight to Milan, where we picked up our ride for the week - this cute little Fiat Panda.

We headed straight out of the city to our destination - the Tuscan countryside. We already knew we'd made the right choice as we drove past one vineyard after another.

Not to mention the olives and figs! We'd already decided we'd be coming home with both wine and olive oil.

We drove through Greve and then up to Montefioralle, where we got out to walk around for a while.

It was the first of many Medieval walled villages we'd visit.

It's hard not to find Tuscany enchanting.

The small towns have cobbled streets, arched tunnels and a deep sense of history.

We were probably there for less than an hour, but I could not stop taking pictures.

I didn't know that I'd find village after village in the Chianti region equally charming.

But we hadn't eaten since our overnight flight and decided it was time to walk back to the car and scout out a place for lunch.

We drove on to Badia a Passignano, another small medieval village. We stopped at a restaurant that used to be a stable that served as a resting place for people traveling by horseback between Florence and Siena (before the Autostrada was constructed).

At Ristoro L'Antica Scuderia, we had a primi course of "naked ricotta and chard" with a butter and sage sauce, and then a secondi course of the coccorel, a roasted chicken. And a bottle of local chianti classico, of course.

Inside, we sat near an older American couple. The woman was fluent in Italian, having lived in Italy for ten years, and very friendly. They said that they came back to visit every year, and he had grown to love the area, too. As they were leaving, the man told us quietly that his wife had dementia and that it would probably be their last visit. He turned back to help her from her chair saying, "Let's go, Precious." We watched them walk out arm in arm and turned to each other with tears in our eyes. It was a powerful lesson in love and the need for living in the moment.

We drove on to Radda in Chianti, stopping occassionally to take photos. We stopped in Radda and asked directions, pleased for the chance to be using the Italian we'd studied. Turns out, our hotel was actually in Vescine, in between Radda and Castellina. Our host, Matteo, checked us in and led us to Room 5.

We had a dinner of of ravioli and grilled vegetables with home-made cheese in the hotel's restaurant, then went back to our room for the night. It was actually half a small house, with a view of the countryside below us.

Aware that it was our honeymoon, Matteo had a bottle of prosecco from one of the hotel's wineries chilling in our room.  It was clear that we were going to be very happy at this place.

Taking a deep breath and jumping in.

A few Fridays ago, we got the key to this little theater, a former Presbyterian church built in 1898. By that time, the food was all made, and all we had left to do was set up. We did all of it ourselves - made hundreds of mini-quiches, another hundred triple chocolate cupcakes, sliced cheese, and put out crackers, fruit and other finger foods. Earlier on Friday, I had bought flowers to make arrangements and bouquets. Actually, the arrangements were mostly from various white flowers in our yard. I had baby's breath with stalks of pale mint for the girls. For me 21 (for the wedding date) cream-colored roses with a spring of rosemary tucked in for luck. They were simple bouquets, with stems wrapped in tulle and ribbons. We hung the tulle and satin backdrop we'd made, put out chairs, set up the tables for food and drink. Saturday morning all the kids were there for a walk-through and to help. They moved chairs, assembled cupcakes and that sort of thing. My older son's girlfriend did my hair for me right before the ceremony. The time seemed to fly by and soon we were preparing to walk down the aisle. When it was my turn, the violinist and guitarist switched from the Celtic music they were playing to "Maybe I'm Amazed."

We finally got to take out the wedding rings we'd stashed away after we had them made for us in Galway. We'd decided to dispense with the traditions we weren't thrilled with, including tossing my bouquet. My older son suggested I go ahead and throw it so he and his brother could get into a brawl, but instead, right before the exchange of rings, I had my older son's girlfriend come up on the stage to take my flowers. We actually did the “with this ring, I thee wed and promise my love” part in Irish Gaelic. We wrote our own vows, and part of mine were also in Gaelic. Each of our vows ended with "I love you," and when he finished his, I said, "You better!" Everyone laughed, as he responded, "You bet!" And then we did a handfasting, an ancient Celtic and Nordic tradition that symbolizes the voluntary binding together of two equals. Our children were our attendants and with each of the promises we made, one of the kids stepped forward to wrap a ribbon around our clasped hands. (I've decided it is time to be a little more circumspect about other people's identity, so you'll just have to picture our beautiful sons and daughters, dressed in our colors of gray/silver and pale blue.)

And then all that was left was a kiss as the musicians began playing the Who song, "You Better You Bet."

Newly married, right outside the church. We didn't spend much time on photos, because we wanted to be with the family and friends who were there to share the day with us.

So pretty quickly we headed back inside for a champagne toast and to talk with everyone. Okay, yeah, we were happy.

We did take a few family photos outside. My brother-in-law is a photographer and in this photo with my sons, their girlfriends, and his daughters, we suddenly both jumped toward him, laughing, and he captured that moment. This is actually my favorite photo of our new family from the wedding.

Our family stuck around after the early afternoon wedding to clean up and haul stuff over to our house. We had a reservation for a family dinner later that night so in the meantime we decided to go for a walk downtown and had a drink up at a rooftop bar. Still in our wedding clothes, we got many congratulations and someone bought us an Irish whiskey. My new mother-in-law had offered to finance a family dinner and we had reserved a room at a downtown restaurant. Unfortunately, when we stopped in to check on our menu, they'd turned it into a used book and record store! We had no idea how lucky that snafu would turn out to be. They offered us this much better private loft, waiving the fee and slashing the prices on bottles of wine.  So instead of a small area in a restaurant, we had this beautiful space for the 30 of us.

The loft overlooked downtown, and we sat with all our kids (and their girlfriends) up at the head table by the windows. We had appetizers  first - baked brie and bruschetta - and then four menu items to choose from. I had the salmon, which was delicious.

Years ago, the restaurant had a wonderful chocolate mousse that they no longer offered. I asked if they could make that for us, and they prepared it in white chocolate cups. More champagne and then it was time for people to go.

Because as part of the loft, they also gave us this room so we could stay the night.  Many of the family went back to their hotels but my siblings set up camp at a table on the square, continuing to drink and catch up. (Safety note: they all had hotel rooms within walking distance, so no one was driving that night). We decided to take one last stroll around the square and when we saw them, we elected to stay outside for a bit.

A strange busker, singing mostly country songs, had parked himself nearby and played a song so we could dance. And then, bizarrely, he told us his last song of the night was just for the newlyweds. He pointed at us and said, "This is for you kids" and then launched into ... wait for it ... the Scooby Doo show song.  Take a bunch of folks who grew up on cartoons of the 70's, ply them with plenty of alcohol, and you've got a crowd laughing and singing along.

But this was waiting for us in our room and finally my new husband said, "Are you coming upstairs with me or do I have to scoop you up and carry you?"