When in Roma...Day 1

So Rome was awesome. After a very long and frustrating day of travel we arrived at the Forty Seven hotel to a chilled bottle of champagne in our room. Which was lovely. We got cleaned up and headed over to Trastavere, the oldest part of the city, and just across the Tiber river from our hotel. The actual Tiber river. I thought that was pretty cool. On the way there we passed this old ruin of a former bridge, which was so awesome. We were walking over the current bridge, and there it was just standing in the middle of the river.


There was a film festival happening that night along the banks of the river, so there were makeshift restaurants, bars and booths set up everywhere. This is me, trying to pass for a fancy film festival attendee at one of the bars.


As soon as we got to Trastevere, I immediately thought that if my brother were young and hip and living in Rome, (instead of young and hip and living in Boston) this would be where he would come for the bar and restaurant scene. Its hip and cool and yet with a very old world feel. Cobblestone streets, narrow winding lanes, vespas and ivy and well dressed young and gorgeous Italians everywhere. He would totally dig it. I wish we'd gotten better pictures, but it was so late and already dark out, and there wasn't a sneaky way to take pictures of the locals without our flash giving us away. Hope this gives a bit of an idea.



Couldn't resist taking this shot though. These teenagers are impossibly cool and totally over it.


The Tiber River at night


The bar where we stopped for a drink after dinner. I liked it for the name - Beige is a code word in my office for anything that is dull. This place was definitely not.



The restaurant where we ate had some funhouse mirrors in the lobby. I like this shot of Geoff.

And this one is great - because no matter how much weight we gained in Italy, at least here we will always look skinny.


I love this shot. Just as we were headed back to the hotel for the night, we spotted this couple cuddling across the street.

Firenze

Just some images of Florence, besides just pictures of me and Geoff. We enjoyed Florence mostly because we were there with Robert Norman. It was actually not one of our favorite cities. It seemed far more urban than we had thought. A lot like New York. Which is lovely, but we see it every day. There were some cool parts though. The Duomo is pretty amazing. We didn't wait in the long line to get inside, but it's just this HUGE building in the middle of shops and other streets. It seemed far too big to be so close to other buildings. There was no open space around it (why should there be - it's in the middle of the city). Still it was unusual. And made it seem even bigger.

The doors are also huge.


Took a ton of pictures of the copy of the David, (yes, even after we figured out it was the copy).


I think the photos of the details are even more interesting than getting the whole statue.



Kinda also really dug the statue of Neptune.


Couple kissing on a park bench.


Old timey postcards.


Artists sharing trade secrets.


The shops on the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence, over the Arno River.


Lady in a white dress. Women in white dresses in Italy will forever remind me of that amazing dress Diane Lane wears in "Under the Tuscan Sun" when she goes to Positano to surprise the guy she's fallen for.


There are literally countless more photos of Florence. I took a whole bunch at that open air market where I snapped that leather dealer and his cigarette a few posts ago. And another whole series on a sun drenched street at magic hour. I could post about 12 of them. But I shall restrain myself...just one picked at random.


OK, and maybe a little window shopping....

Robert Norman

While we were in Italy, one of Geoff's photographer friends, Robert Norman was also in Tuscany to shoot a wedding. So our last day there, we met up with him and headed into Florence. Firstly, he is hysterical.




Secondly, he's super fun to be with and enjoys food and wine just as much as we do, so it was a perfect pairing. We wandered around Florence all day, took photos of the statue of Neptune and the copy of The David (there was much debate about whether it was the original or the copy - ended up being the copy and by the time we settled on that, the museum that had the real one was closed, ah well). We loved the doors on the Duomo and the ones on the Baptistry. We basically had a lovely day just talking, taking photos and eating.


And I would highly recommend taking your own personal papparazzi on your honeymoon. Robert took some awesome photos of us and I'm SO grateful for them! They are the only ones that have us both in it that are remotely framed well (i.e. not taken by a tourist or with Geoff's super long arm), not to mention gorgeously lit and just...SO frame-worthy.

Hill Towns

I honestly, at this point, don't know how many hill towns we saw in Tuscany. Seemed like there was a new one almost every day. They were charming and full of pottery, tiny streets, wine tastings, and great locals. We really loved Sienna, and were there just a week before the annual horse race that they have around the town's main piazza. So the dirt was laid down and well packed and the bleachers were set up in front of all the stores all the way around the entire piazza. The horses will run just where those people and tables are.


One of the main buildings in the Piazza


Love this shot of this waitress waiting for customers at magic hour in the Piazza. The light is amazing.


San Gemignano - Super cool pottery and somehow we managed to be there during some sort of block party...for lack of a better word. They shut down part of the main street and set up tables for dinner. We also went to a specialty cheese shop and found a chocolatier. Both were AMAZING.


We did a lot of wine tasting in Montalcino and Montepulciano. And Montalcino is SO high on the hill, I truly felt like we were about to drive into a cloud.




On our drive from Montepulciano to Cortona, it rained for the first time since our first day in Lake Como. We snapped a ton of pictures out the car window as we were driving, and proved Geoff's point about being able to throw your camera down the street in Italy and be able to take a great picture.



Fun shots of the crazy clouds during the rainstorm.



Cortona (made famous by "Under the Tuscan Sun") was gorgeous and though we'd been led to believe it was overrated by the guidebooks, we really enjoyed it. It rained slightly while we were there but we were undeterred and found a little restaurant where we could eat outside (even though they looked at us like we were crazy) And this is where we had one of our best meals of our whole trip.


That is a chilled tomato soup in that huge wine glass in front of me. It was amazing. Our waiter said I couldn't leave Tuscany without trying it. Though he did say that the chef doesn't make it quite as good as his grandmother.

At home in Tuscany

Though we went on road trips galore during our 12 day stay in Tuscany, we did spend a few days closer to home in and around our villa in the little town of Montespertoli. You've seen some of it already, but even with all its challenges, it was a good home base. Every morning we had breakfast at the house before setting out for the day on our many adventures. Somehow, we didn't manage to discover the amazing world of espresso until 3 or 4 days before we left. Largely, this was because I was intimated by the espresso machine, and Geoff, not being a huge coffee drinker himself, was mostly just unaware of it. And so that left me to make American coffee almost each morning. In Tuscany. Which is so wrong somehow. I mean....when in Rome... (or Tuscany)...

So we finally discovered espresso. Our lives may never be the same. Now, we'd had it served to us at various restaurants and cafes during the trip, but to make it for ourselves...? Fortunately, my husband is a brilliant engineer. Not that it takes an engineer to run an espresso machine, but Geoff is so good at knowing how things WORK. He is incredibly gifted in that way, which has proved extremely handy in every possible way, from installing things around the house to knowing the best way to wind up your iPod headphones so they don't get tangled, and the espresso machine was a walk in the park for him. AND, we discovered that he loves espresso - even more than regular coffee. AND espresso proved to be the best way to get a little caffeine in the morning before setting out. Coffee, you linger and chat over. Espresso gets you going quickly when you've got to get on the road to an amazing Tuscan destination.


We occasionally had lunch or dinner at the house too. Which usually consisted of: wine, bread with olive oil, caprese salad and some sort of pasta bolognese (Geoff's favorite).


We even spend one day at the house just chilling out. We'd tried to go to a pool cause we'd had so many road trips and it was hot and we just wanted a day to relax. We tried the fancy pool, which was closed for the season (in the summer??) and then the town pool, which was packed and at which Geoff had no cell service, which wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't needed to be on call for work (which is a whole other blog), so we were stuck. I took control and determined that our day of rest would not be ruined, since i knew we could go home, where food and wine and bathrooms were accessible, sit in the front yard with our books and use the hose if things got hot. Genius plan. And it finally caught on. This is how we came to recognize that, one of the many amazing things I bring to the table in this marriage is the ability to come up with a Strong Plan B.


So we sat out in the yard, listened to music, read, ate lunch, drank a bit too much wine (the only downfall of my Strong Plan B) and enjoyed the day.


(Don't worry mom, we didn't really drink this many. Not in one afternoon, anyway.)