I’m in Italy

That’s a great way to start something, just I’m in Italy.

For the past six months, I have been telling people when they ask where in Europe I am going to go, well definitely Italy. Italy was always a fixed point. I would say, “Dian and I will be in Italy, Tuscany actually in September for a wedding.” I found I was saying that six months from the date, five months, four months and so on, even when the wedding was only a month away and I was still saying, “I will be in Italy in September.” It still didn’t feel real and felt so far away.

When Dian and I were in Dublin, packing up our things in the hostel and saying to each other, “We better go catch the bus to take us to the airport” it still didn’t feel like we were going to Italy. Even when we got to the airport we had the usual hectic time of checking our bags, getting to our gate and then getting on the plane. It wasn’t until we had landed, got out of the airport, started looking around for our bus, and had to ask, and then got an answer back in Italian that it began to sink in, ‘We ‘re in Italy.’ The Irish accents were gone, and it took a moment to realize it would be awhile before we heard them again.

When we arrived into Siena it was dark, when we arrived at the country side villa where the wedding was taking place it was even darker. Even when we arrived at our villa living quarters it was in the dark because it took us all several minutes to figure out how to turn on the lights. It wasn’t until the morning, when we opened up the drapes covering our windows, that in classic romantic fashion we saw the hills of Tuscany. It was then that Dian and I turned to each other and said, “We really, truly are in Italy.”

And that has been the feeling each morning since, the first thought before anything else, this feeling of waking up in Italy. At this beautiful villa in Tuscany we observed other guests arriving for the wedding and watched as they moved around, smiling, stressing, relaxing, yelling, crying, enjoying. We ate amazing pasta and drank wine, we danced while overlooking Tuscan hills, and swam in cold water after baking in the hot Tuscan sun amid this same unbelievable view.

I saw a wedding take place of someone for whom I care very much , and watch her shine like the  Cinderella she has dreamed of being since her girlhood.

I savoured all that Sienna in the sun offers and drank wine in the warmth of the evening. I watched tourists from all over fumble their way through the myriad of sights, and ate ice cream in the square. One week down, three more to go.