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
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