Getting Married, our Last Week in Italy & Another Adventure in Traveling Home

Thanks so much to all of you who have kept up with our blog. For our last 5 days of our trip we had trouble getting to an internet point to keep you updated. Things have been very busy since we returned, and since we like to do these blogs together it has taken us some time to be in the same place since we have opposite work schedules. Thanks so much for your patience and we've also finished our online picture album! We've reduced our 1,500 pictures to about 150 and added captions. Enjoy! (link to album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ChrisandJessiGrass888/ItalyWeddingAdventure02# )

Wedding Day
We woke up early to pick up our clothes from being pressed. Chris went to get us coffee so he wouldn't see the clothes (even his clothes had some surprises). We were staying in a camp ground that had canvas tents on platforms with beds inside. The tents were dispersed through the olive groves on a hillside overlooking the beautiful city of Florence. We got dressed in our tent, that when zipped up gets very hot and humid very fast. Chris loved the buttons that Jessi had sewn on his shirt for him and was surprised by the special embroidery on the inside collar. Our friend Carol Johnson had embroidered "Christopher & Jessica Grass 8-8-8" on the inside of Chris' collar and also in the inside hem of Jessi's dress. When Chris turned around to see Jessi in her dress, he was speechless for a couple seconds before he got out, "I love my mother-in-law." (Jessi's mom Corinne had made the wedding dress by hand, without a pattern and Chris had been aware of the troubles she had because the material was extremely difficult to work with.) Once fully dressed in white and ivory and Jessi with jewelery made by her sister Adrienne, we walked to meet our witnesses, Chris and Sim, at the cafe. After commenting on how relaxed we were, the four of us set off to walk down the hill to Florence's city center.

The building we were getting married in was the Palazzo Vecchio which, built between the 13th and 14th centuries, still serves as it's original purpose, the town hall. The Sala Rosa (red room) where we were married, matches the medieval style of the Palazzo Vecchio, with it's deep red tapestries, large framed paintings, chandeliers, and red velvet chairs. You would have thought we were sitting in the royal court of the Medicis. The woman who was performing the ceremony was very excited for us and loved that we were staying in the campground, which she felt captured the views of the city in an amazing way. She was also appreciative that we made our attempts to speak Italian. The vows were read in Italian and were translated for us by Michelle our translator. They were different than the traditional American vows, but we loved them, and of course agreed to them. The ceremony lasted about 20 minutes and then we took some pictures and went outside to toast with Chris, Sim and Michelle. After thanking them profusely for their help we split our different ways.

Our first stop was to sit down and get something to drink. We were both excited and we found out that when Jessi can't stop smiling she easily forgets to also breathe out after breathing in so she was getting light headed. After our pit stop and loading up with water we stopped by, as promised, to the shop where we bought our rings. Next, we had to reach the Prefetura on the other side of town in time to have them validate our marriage licenses, so they would legal in the United States. After we completed this essential step, we went to the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens to take pictures and relax (and breathe).

Our first dinner as a married couple was at "4 Leoni" (4 Lions), near the Pitti Palace and where we had gotten great food our first night in Florence. The man and woman waiting on us were a great team and kept us laughing. We enjoyed our 3 hour meal with wonderful food, multiple champagne toasts and plenty of entertainment. When we got up to leave, the rehearsal dinner party, that was seated 3 tables from ours, cheered and clapped for us, and the restaurant owner gave us one of their t-shirts to remember our dinner with them. Our walk home was perfect after our huge meal and it lead us by the Arno River at night.

Tuscany
Our first trip as a married couple was to Podere Spedalone, an inn in Tuscany. We made the train ride in our wedding clothes. Three old ladies were traveling together and noticed our clothing and all turned towards us talking rapidly in Italian. We could pick out enough Italian to know they were talking about us getting married, but whether they wanted to talk to us about it, or just wanted to stare and talk loudly about us from 2 seats away, we didn't know. We just sat and smiled. There were repairs on the tracks for the last couple miles, so they made us get off the train and they transported us to our destination via coach bus. This was fine until we heard honking and realized our bus driver thought he was a speed racer and was passing cars and vespas on twisty, hilly, cliff side country Italian roads, so small they didn't even have a middle line, or a shoulder. It was a relief to get off the bus and get in a car at the station with a driver that wasn't into racing for our last 15 minutes of travel to the inn.

Podere Spedalone was simply beautiful. Parts of the restored farm house are from the 6th century. It has had many uses over the years. It was inhabited by monks who planted the olive groves that are terraced up the hillside, it was a stopping point on a pilgrim route to Rome, along with being a 3 family farm at one point. Giancarlo, the inn keeper, bought and restored the property in 2004 and took great care to have the details of the house remain the same. (For more info on the inn check out their website http://poderespedalone.com/ ) Along with being the innkeeper, Giancarlo was also the chef and the farmer. His 3 course lunches and 5 course dinners kept us occupied for hours, tasting his own blend of flavors, and very little added in the way of seasonings. Our meals were served family style and Giancarlo ate with us giving us background on what we were eating and stories of being a farmer and innkeeper. His generosity and the atmosphere of Podere Spedalone was a nice, quiet change of pace from our previous travels.

In the few hours when we weren't eating, we found ourselves by the pool, lounging around and each getting an Ayrvedic massage with herb infused olive oil. The inn had bikes for daily rentals and since we had spent the last 2.5 weeks walking everywhere, we figured we were up for the challenge of biking in hilly Tuscany to the town of Pienza about 4 miles away. After 2 flat tires and getting half way down the drive way we decided to ditch the bike plan, lock them up to a tree by the side of the road and make the journey on foot. This was probably the better plan, considering that 75% the trip to the hilltop town of Pienza was a constant uphill. We had NOT been training for this kind of trek. Pienza was the first planned European town and offered great views of Tuscany and excellent gelato, of which we made two stops for Chris to indulge in trying as many flavors as possible before leaving Italy.

Last Tourist Stop in Florence
We returned to Florence in the afternoon of August 10th before we had to fly home the next morning. In one of our many searches through tour guide books, we found a palace that caught our eye, the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. The Medicis were a prominent family in Florence and are responsible for making Florence an important city during the Renaissance. Riccardi caught our attention because Chris' step-dad (Jessi's now father-in-law) is Robert Riccardi, and we wanted to know the Riccardi family role in this palace. We found out that the Riccardis bought the palace after the Medicis and so both families name's recognized. In talking to Rob, it seems as though there have been some searches to track the Riccardi lineage, but of course this information sparks more of an interest to find the link.

The Trip Home
We returned to our wonderful Florence campground for our last night in Italy. With needing to wake up at 4 am to catch a taxi to the airport we got right to business with repacking all of the things we had collected along our travels, for the long trip home. Much to our surprise, around 9 pm a band of drums, trumpets, a saxophone, etc. started to play on the campground's cafe/bar patio. Needless to say, we got very little sleep and when we woke at 4 am there were still people wandering around from the festivities.

We arrived at the Florence airport before 5 am only to find out that Delta had once again messed up our flights, giving us another one of their lemons for us to turn into lemonade. While passing our newly found 3 hours in the airport we ate breakfast and took pictures of us in our wedding clothes (we had worn them so that when Mom and Rob picked us up from the airport we could surprise them with the full wedding effect). Eventually someone helped us undo the mess Delta made and we were checked into our flight to Switzerland.

After another flight over the Alps, we arrived in Switzerland and Chris was able to find Swiss Chocolate to his liking. At the gate we found out that our standby seats on Swiss Air were bumped up to business class. We spent the next 9 hours eating and drinking to our hearts content, and at one point we were sipping Swiss Pinot Noir and playing video games while sitting in our wedding clothes. As stupid as it was to drink a red wine while wearing all white, we were surprisingly lucky and had a great time.

When we hit the JFK airport, we were abruptly awakened from our lap of luxury to the reality of flying with Delta. We still had over 2 hours till our flight was to take off, but already our flight was canceled, along with 17 others Delta flights in that terminal alone. Their solution to the problem was to fly us home on Wednesday afternoon (mind you, we arrived in JFK on Monday). This of course was a ridiculous solution because Chris was due to work the next day and company policy states that if you take a sick day the first day back from vacation, you don't get paid for your vacation. Since Jessi had just quit her job with her vacation benefits, it wasn't an option for us to go with out the vacation pay. Eventually they found a us a standby flight from another airport in New York City, the next morning, that would take us to Cincinnati and then get on another flight to Raleigh that was intended to arrive 2 hours before Chris was due to work. Given Delta's track record on this trip alone, we let them book us on standby, and then proceeded to call family and friends to brainstorm an alternative. After searching other options via, flight, train and rental car, we either couldn't find anything available to get us home within 18 hours or the prices were over $500 a person. (Please also note that at this point it was 8 pm, we had only slept about 4 hours the night before and in an effort to be able to sleep when we were "supposed" to arrive we had stayed awake for our travels until now and had been up for 22 hours.)

Our final and most feasible option came from the help of 2 friends (Krista from Philly and Devon from Washington, D.C.) and required us to piece together our transportation. First of all Jessi had to change out of her wedding dress, and layered up in a nightgown, "Just Married" tank top and a pashmina wrap. We of course had packed our breakables in our carry-ons, so Chris had to stay in his white wedding clothes, as his other clothes were in the not so dependable hands of Delta's check-on luggage. We hopped on the NYC subway and traveled for almost an hour, switching trains and struggling to stay awake, eventually reaching the Chinatown in the lower east side of Manhattan at 10:30 pm. From the subway we had to find our bus, which we thought would be found in a bus depot but with some help from a cabbie passing by, we discovered that it was just 2 coach buses sitting on the side of the road in front of a liquor store and a bakery in the middle of Chinatown. After bargaining with the ladies to get on with the little cash we had (a mix of dollars and euros), we finally got 2 seats on the bus which, at 11 pm was full of other random people who wanted to get to DC. Four hours later and $20/person later they dropped us off on a street corner in Chinatown, Washington, DC. We walked a block and a half to Devon's apartment building where his doorman was holding the car key for us and by 3:20 am we were headed on our way, driving Devon's car back home to NC.

We made a pit stop at the Waffle House around 4 am and got to Cary, NC around 8:30 am, with a quick pit stop in Mom and Rob's neighborhood for a quick change in the car, back into Jessi's wedding dress. Then we proceeded to pull up to their house, in our wedding attire, honking the horn and waking the neighbors, only 11 hours after we were supposed to arrive in NC. For the next 6 hours we loaded up on the caffeine and unpacked our souvenirs with Mom and Rob, shared stories and enjoyed some family time.

Of course when Chris showed up to work he found out he wasn't on the schedule till the next day, which worked out great since we had only gotten 7 hours of sleep in the last 67 hours. All the same the adventure home was another great time together that makes us laugh when we look back.

We hope you've enjoyed just a couple of our many stories from our Wedding Adventure. It's touching to know how many of you have come back to us telling us you kept up with our travels and were awaiting these last stories to complete the trip. Hopefully it was worth the wait.

Much love,
Chris and Jessi (finally) Grass
***PLEASE NOTE we moved June 24, 2008. Please update to our new address.
301 Westview Drive Apt B
Carrboro, NC 27510

Rings, Prospects and Wedding Prep

Now that we've returned there are a couple last steps before we get married. The first is to attend a premarital appointment with a translator a couple days prior to getting married. Second is to pick up our wedding rings and third is to attend the ceremony with a translator and two witnesses.

We had found a translator that was suggested to us by the US Consulate in Italy which was 300 Euro per appointment. When you do the math (€1 = $1.70) and see why we weren't about to spend €300 per appointment. We tried a couple other outlets, but couldn't find someone less than €200, so we decided to try another route. We went up to the reception desk of the place we are staying and asked one of the women there to help us. As soon as we said marriage, her eyes lit up and she agreed. The next morning when we met up with her we found out that she was Venezuelan and had married an Italian in the last year and had since moved to Florence with him. Fortunately her Italian was good and she was excited to help us again for our ceremony. We felt very lucky to have found such a sweet person who was able to get excited with us.

As for our rings, it has always been our dream to get them on Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence. This bridge was once where the meat markets but when a prince came by in the middle ages, he was disgusted by the smell and ordered the shops along the bridge to become gold shops instead. We explored this "gold" bridge for the perfect rings, and the perfect price. The rings we chose are le fedi comede, which translates to comfortable ring. They are rounded on the inside for a perfect and smooth fit. They're exactly what we were looking for.

Our last obstacle was to find 2 witnesses. We sat down for dinner and game of cards, at the bar/patio tables where we are staying, and scoped out the prospects. Our witnesses had to be the right set of people. They couldn't be those who would drink too much and forget what they had agreed to, they had to look like they would enjoy being witnesses and not be cynical towards marriage, and they had to be able to speak English, so they would understand what we needed. We scoped out a couple looked to be enjoying eachother and we had run into her in line at the restaurant and knew she spoke English. When we approached them the first thing the woman said was, "Really? Well I could take pictures, I'm a photographer." Plus, her boyfriend's name was Chris. Can you believe our luck?!? Plus they were excited for us and more than willing to help us out. (We were of course going to give them money for a good dinner, which no traveler can pass up.) We can't believe our luck and are so excited to get married. 8-8-8 here we come!

Love
Chris and Jessi (almost Grass)

Day Trip to Sienna

So we took advantage of our Eurail Pass and made a day trip to Sienna. Simply beautiful and great to be surrounded in a hilly medieval town. Well worth the trip. (Sorry for the short blogg, we just didn't want to forget about Sienna before we got to the next blogg.)

Venice

We spent the last 2 days exploring Venice. In an effort to be thrifty we waited to get the perfect map. One that would be detailed and cheap. Of course we quickly got caught up in the shops and an hour later we were lost and without a map. It took us another half hour to find a map and then we were pretty good until we realized that not only was the map wrong about the streets in our neighborhood, but another couple's map that was different from ours was also wrong. We decided we were in a scene from the movie Labyrinth and the walls were shifting on us (but no Jim Henson characters to taunt us). We were surprised at what a good hunting team we made when we found many stores again the second day that we had wanted to go back to and were off the main routes. It was wonderful to be on the water and away from cars for another couple days. It of course wasn't a complete substitute for Cinque Terre as we noticed that most everything we looked at to buy shared colors with the Mediteranean Sea.

Cinque Terre

The train from Rome to La Spezia was 4 hours and gave us glimpses of the Mediteranean Sea along the way. In La Spezia we hopped on another train and 8 minutes later, after a long tunnel, we came to the Riomaggiore (the southern most of the 5 villages) train station. When we got of the train we looked out over the platform to see that we were 75-100 feet above the sea on the cliffs. At that point we simultaneously expressed our interests in not going to Venice and just staying there. Our pictures couldn't even capture how amazing and beautiful this place is. Our hostel didn't help either. It was a spacious two bedroom appartment with a large living room, kitchen and patio, that we shared with 4 Aussies and 2 other Americans and looked out over the village, half way up the cliffs. We finally conviced ourselves that we could leave when we promissed our selves we would return within 5 years.

A side note: Cinque Terre is 5 small villages in the Italian Riviera on the Mediteranean Coast. For many years the only way to access the villages was by boat. Now there is a train that cut into the cliffs through tunnels. There is also an ancient foot path that zig-zags the coast and cuts through their terraced vinyards and orchards. The terraces stretch far up the cliffs. We saw many pictures of this place and heard we should visit it by many people, but nothing prepared us for how amazing it would be.

On our first day we took the train to the northern most town, Monterosso and hiked the 9k (approx. 6 miles) down to Riomaggiore. The first 3.5 hours were fairly difficult, especially in the hot sun. There were times when the path took us through a little shade or a small brook, but for the most part we just tried not to trip down the mountain as gawked at the breathtaking views. That evening we made our own meal in the kitchen (1st time in 9 days!), hung out with our housemates on the patio and all went for a late night swim in the Mediteranean.

The next day we found a set of rocks at the far end of the Riomaggiore pebble beach and our own private place to sun and swim. That afternoon we rented a kayak and went south along the coast, finding caves and a waterfall. The water was a beautiful deep blue green and clear enough to see atleast 20 feet below.

Cinque Terre was the perfect place to truly relax and be on vacation. It has a great combination of beauty, nature, excursions and character and easily the most romatic place we've been so far. It is worth the trip if you ever get the chance.

Florence (round 1), Rome and Pompeii

Florence: The view from our campsite was beautiful... a panoramic view of the city from a hillside. We finished all of our paperwork and got to see the room (in Palazzo Vecchio) where we're getting married (it's beautiful). Stumbbled accross a wonderful museum. Found our wedding rings (in Ponte Vecchio's gold shops), which we'll pick up when we return to Florence.

Rome: Crumbling but colorful hostel. Traveled about the city. Walked to see the fountains through out the city at night. Caught the Vatican Museum (largest in the world) on the only Free day all month. Saving 28 Euros is key when the dollar is so weak. (28 euros = $47.60) Visited St. Peter's Cathedral, hiked to the top of the cupola on the cathedral (551 steps up, not counting the ramps) and learned about the pope's secret passage way in the city wall to escape in case of danger. Took a day trip to explore Pompeii's ruins, something Chris has wanted to do since he was 14. We also found a bakery in Pompeii... another must for Chris. Finally we made our way to the Roman ruins in the city of Rome. We saw what was left of the Coloseum, Palantine Hill (where rulers and senate lived), the Forum, where Caesar was thought to be killed, the Pantheon and visited our favorite fountain, the Trevi Fountain, again.

So far we've had so much fun traveling together and are looking forward to the big day.

(Sorry the last blog ended on a negative note. We were down to our last seconds of internet time and had intended it to sound as though we were entertained by the adventures we had from the start... of course as we were rushed it didn't quite come out that way.)

Lots of love,
Chris and Jessi

Be careful what you wish for.

We wished for a wedding adventure... little did we know it would start before we left RDU with a 3hr delay turning into a cancelled flight, a delayed second flight, missing our connecting flight to Europe at JFK, begging Delta to pay for the flight they made us miss so that we could make our appointment with the Consulate in Florence, and praying they would finish the paperwork before the plane finished boarding so we could make our 1 am flight to Paris. Thankfully we got our paperwork, hand delivered to the gate, 2 minutes before boarding and we arrived in Florence only 7 hours later than planned. Plus we got to fly over the Alps, which was a first for both of us. Lastly when we arrived in Florence we caught a taxi to our campground on the other side of town. We saw our first television screen in a dashboard on which our taxi driver watched the highlights of the lastest soccert match while adjusting it's color and brightness and dodging bicyclists and vespas all while driving.