Si, La Voglio (Yes, I want it)...

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And finally our adventures in Italy make it to travel blog!

I had originally written separate blogs for each place that we visited, but being so busy when we were out there getting ready for the wedding and sightseeing we really didn’t have a lot of time to do much else.

Without further ado I shall begin....

Thursday 29th September to Friday 30th September

We arrived in Italy on the 29th September to Verona where we spent 2 nights in the Best Western Hotel de Capuleti. Verona is lovely, small and very old with lots of shop windows to browse in, gelato shops galore and amazingly great pizza. It is also home to an ancient Roman Forum, Juliet’s Balcony and a hanging whale bone which was meant to fall on the first persons head to walk underneath....400 years later and still no one has been whacked.

Our second day in Italy we caught the train to Venice, it was quite a short journey (just over an hour) and relatively easy. We had a nice train (they seemed to get worse as the trip went on!) with plenty of room to lounge around on. It’s strange in Italy, when you buy a train ticket it is actually valid for one use up to two months after you’ve bought it. So when the ticket inspector comes round (boooo!) and you show your ticket, if you haven’t been to the little yellow machine on the platform and get it stamped you get fined (booooo sssssss).

Anyway, just outside of Venice train station is....you guessed it....one of the canals that make Venice so famous all over the world. It was amazing! I’m not going to go in to too much detail about Venice as I don’t really think I can do it justice – BUT – if you ever get the chance to go you must. Apparently it isn’t going to be there for too much longer what with global warming and the rising of the oceans etc. We saw evidence of this when we were there – St Mark’s square had boards all over it so you didn’t get your feet wet as the canal was making its way up through the stone floor.

If I remember correctly Venice is built on 117 small islands (wow!) and connected by 400 small bridges. As you can see from the photos it is heaven for snapping away, there are just so many things to take pictures of. As we walked around in the heat, through lots and lots of small narrow alley ways getting lost we saw some streets (well most actually) that looked like they haven’t been touched in 100’s and 100’s of years. I’m guessing they haven’t as Venice is a UNESCO world heritage site, but it was just unbelievable. Of course we sampled the gelato and pizza and got ripped off (a one time only thing!) by 2 beers costing a whopping 21 Euros and Phil being shouted at because he wasn’t a worthy customer to use the toilet...after a very long day (about 10 hours) of walking around Venice we started to make our way back to Verona for more food and gelato and a nice comfy bed.

Saturday 1st October to Wednesday 5th October

Today was the day we made our way to Lake Garda (Lago di Garda) and Malcesine where we were to be married just under a week later.

We decided we would be frugal and get the bus, after a taxi to the bus stop (5 minute drive costing more than a 2 hour bus journey) and waiting around for an hour the bus finally turned up and we had to battle our way on with about 50 teenagers all trying to get to school/college.

The journey wasn’t too bad, we were just worried about loosing something before the wedding and Phil going around in a suite and flip flops or something....all turned out to be well and we got to Malcesine with what we started with.

We had arranged to stay in an apartment for the first 4 nights with my best friend (Faye) and her boyfriend (Phil’s ‘unofficial’ best man) James. They were to arrive later that day.

The apartment was dirt cheap at only 80 Euros a night for the 4 of us, it was spacious enough and clean and right next to the cable car that takes mainly cyclists and walkers up to the top of the mountain behind! After dumping our bags we thought we would treat ourselves to a coffee (which after 25 years of resisting I now drink thanks to Italy). Faye and James shortly turned up and my mum, Peter, Ken and Carole made their way in a taxi up the mountain to the villa where they were staying.

Malcesine is also absolutely stunning, we really couldn’t have picked a better place to get married. It is really geared towards water babies and fitness fanatics. You can do all kinds of water sports in the 54 mile long lake, or rent a mountain bike and go along all sorts of mountain paths, you can even go paragliding off the top of the mountain (not for the feint hearted!). We unfortunately didn’t take part in any of these sports as it was just coming out of season and I really didn’t want to be breaking or bruising anything before the big day.....

Our days in Malcesine were filled with sunbathing, a trip up the mountain, shopping, eating eating and more eating, drinking copious amounts of coffee, visiting the nearby towns and all in all having a nice relaxing time with family and friends before we tied the knot.

Nearly all of our guests had arrived the previous day and we managed to spot them walking back from the beach just as they were getting off the bus stop, we arranged to all meet up later that evening to have a pre wedding meal.....yum!

Thursday 6th October

The big day arrived! We didn’t do the traditional thing and spend the night apart (we had moved out of the apartment the day before and in to a hotel) so we were meant to get up at 7am and meet everyone downstairs for breakfast at 8am. Oops – obviously far too relaxed we actually woke up at 7:45am with 15 minutes to rush about getting dressed and ready. Erika, the owner of the hotel where we stayed, had a set up a big table just for us and our family and decorated it beautifully. We had a huge choice of food and drink and stuffed ourselves in preparation for the day ahead.

After breakfast my mum, Faye and I walked the short walk over to the hair dressers to get ourselves beautified. I had my hair, nails and makeup done which was lovely and I would highly recommend the ladies that did it all! We ambled back to the hotel, went up to my room and all got ready together. There were no tears by me, and just a few from my mum who was looking a bit bleary eyed when they left to walk to the castle.

We had a tuk tuk/ape as our wedding car, which came to pick my and Ken (my brother) up at 1:45pm and take us down the narrow cobbly streets to the castle. It was really nice, everyone we went past was cheering and clapping and taking photos – watch out OK magazine!

The ceremony was all in Italian and translated by our wedding planner, we said our ‘I do’s’ in Italian as we thought it would be quite fitting. After saying ‘Si, La Voglio’ we were declared husband and wife!!

We were presented with a few keepsakes from the registrar and then headed for a photo shoot around the castle with Faye (our photographer) and James (our donkey) – all our other guests headed back down to the castle bar for more drinks.

After an hour or so we made our way back through the stone archway to everyone throwing confetti over us and more photo taking – then we hopped in the tuk tuk and whizzed down the hill to the lake side where we had our champagne reception. After the reception we headed along the lake a little way by foot to the boat that was to take us to La Voglia restaurant and the 7 course meal we had planned.....

The meal went down very very well, even though by the 4th/5th course everyone was starting to loosen their belts a little bit and begin to wonder if they could carry on. The night ended at around 9pm with everyone far to stuffed and full of a mixture of wine/limoncello/grappa and prosecco to carry on. Malcesine is quite a sleepy little place, with people finishing up in restaurants around 10pm – we followed suit, getting married certainly does make you sleepy even though it feels like the day last about 2 hours!

We had a brilliant day/night with all our friends and family (16 including us), sad that not all of them could be there but we chose to get married abroad because it was what we wanted to do it made it simpler, cheaper and more chilled out. We achieved everything that we wanted. I just wish we could go and do it all again, thank you to all of you reading this that made it to Malcesine and to all of you who couldn’t make it for one reason or another you were there in our thoughts and our hearts.

As well as doing a blog just for our wedding photo's I’m also going to continue the second half of our Italian trip in another blog, where we travelled as husband and wife to more stunning and beautiful places – may there be many more to come.

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