Closing Out A Journey, Sensuously

A lovely product that's out there in the world has taken our photographer's work and turned it into amazing gifts for family. The 7 x 7" book I designed arrived today as a birthday gift for my Mom. It's a chronology of amazing photos of our wedding day that Margaret took. For a Beta, these folks have figured A LOT out. My apologies to readers of both my blogs, I've already ranted about Blurb!

Not only does Mom love it, she praised the design which I did myself- it's so easy to do! Maybe, someday when I have time, I'll find myself actually making one of these for me and David to enjoy. For now, I've got a few more of these in the queue.

This will be my final post, unless I get some terribly brilliant idea that can't possibly be handled by my improvised perspective (with no commitment to topic, I can hardly go wrong).

I will leave you with a sweet parting story. Anyone with Italian heritage should celebrate the romance of this Venetian practice. It sure would be a cool thing to re-enact in a wedding.

This golden galleon (shown here in Venice's Naval History Museum) is a replica of the Bucintoro. On Ascension Day, May 17th in Italy civic, religious and military VIPs would sail this ship out from St. Mark's for a marriage ceremony with the sea.

As part of the ceremony, they would actually throw and then drag a metal ring symbolizing marriage to the sea through the water behind the ship. There seems to be a discrepancy between the Naval History Museum's dating this ceremony back to 1277 vs. Wikipedia's version which places the start date for the ritual at 1311.

Thank you for taking part in our wedding journey. All 900+ photos (2.31GB) worth of images we captured during the month will be coming on-line gradually on our Flickr page, in addition to the podcast of the concert Dave gave in France.
It was an amazing 31-day journey through 10 countries and we're blessed to be able to share it with you in this way.

Lluna de Mel Anniversari Natalici (“Honeymoon Birthday” in Catalan)

Today is David’s 41^st birthday. After waking up in a lovely marble-floored house where our kind hostess runs a guesthouse in Tessera outside Venice, we took in the agrarian farmland as a desperately needed breather from the suffocating humidity and humanity of Venice. Close to our bed and breakfast, we find Torre di Tessera, a 9^th century former lighthouse now turned tower built by the Venetians overlooking the farmland which sits on the lagoon. It’s not pedestrian area- it was filled with small farms, melodious birds heat and humidity! We had lunch at a tiny café in Tessera where Italian men in brightly colored muscle and t-shirts enjoyed a lunchtime drink while teasing each other mercilessly.

Before departing, our proprietress who didn’t speak a word of English insisted on sending us off only after serving coffee, some local wine and plum cake. Our conversation was challenged, even after her friend who spoke Spanish arrived to triage our dialogue. I’ve had 2 years of Spanish, 3 years of Portugese, 1 year of French, 8 weeks of Italian and I still don’t conjugate verbs well in any language and am reduced to context, gestures and pleasantry phrases—paaa-thetic!

At Girona airport, our .01 Euro flight on Ryan Air revealed its dark marketing underbelly: our bags 10 kilos over the weight limit. The 8 {euros] per kilo penalty is what we might have been charged had the flight had it not been a sale. Our flight back to London next month is also on Ryan Air.

We rented a car and drove to Barcelona, arriving at 10pm. Ten minutes later, we were out the door again for the most impressive dinner we’ve ever had anywhere in Europe: Moo. Happy Birthday David.

Joan Roca's Tasting Menu for June 21st

Rachel: [Looking up from the orange almond sole] Will we ever be able to eat at Chez Panisse again?

David: A very long wine-induced intellectual answer that ended with the sentence, “Marx would eat here and think ah, Communism brought to life.”

View from London W2

Day 1, or rather night 1. We were grateful to camp out with Amy and Stephen and after a latte and a half of organic coffee and a good shower (plus ibuprofen for the dehydration headache and sleeping pills), we are human again (with clean teeth)! After flooding the neighbor downstairs' closet with our post-travel showers, we headed off to the gym for a shower this morning.

We are in St. Stephens Gardens in Notting Hill with a lovely view from their terrace. Walk to everything!

Next stop on our tour of London airports (we'll see three of four in these next weeks), Gatwick! Amy is sending us off with British staples- brie, crackers, a package of McVitie's with milk chocolate and apples.

We will be with our lovely hosts again for our American celebration of 4th of July!

A Codpiece for My Medieval Gig, Perchance

Many of the places we're going on honeymoon have been photographed a thousand times over, but our weeklong Medieval music and food workshop (led by our wedding fiddler) is worth some attention because it's more off the beaten travel path. And this is not a photograph I expect to have the chance to personally take.
This is Calvignac where for one of the nights at Latitude we will rehearsing to sing and danc for the French (people that is). It's the first ever public performance and we are working among our group of friends on the costumes that we plan to send ahead to be there when we arrive in La Toulzanie.

I'm not too much of a dress up kind of girl (the wedding was a stretch for me). But I do have good theater values ingrained. The show must go on (thanks Mom and Dad).
So gems like this are a priceless view into the conversations newlyweds have:

Rachel: On my list of things we need to get done for the honeymoon is shopping. I need new jogging shoes, and some summer weather pants and tops. What's on your list?

David: Tights [Rachel pauses writing], a codpiece, maybe some Capezio shoes, a hat. Oh, and I need bling.

Rachel: I...meant at Macy's kind of things.

David: Oh well, I don't know.

Rachel: Don't you need underwear, we're going for a long time.

David: I'm not taking a lot of clothes, probably only about a weeks worth.

Rachel: A week's worth? We're going for a month. That means we'll have to do laundry [reviews itinerary in head] on the tour and also in France. Well, I guess we will be able to, but will we be able to do laundry in La Toulzanie [picture of 14th century moulin on the water sticks in head]?

David: Yes.

Rachel: Well, I'm taking more clothes than that because I'm a girl.

I'm not making this up, I swear. Goddess save me from the theater!

Photo by Neil Buffée, the Latitude General Director.

Where Aren't We Going on our Honeymoon

A wee vicarious appetite whetting here for what we hope will be a successful travel blog. I can already envision just posting photos for those vicariously famished and then experience and once home, going back to update the entire thing with facts, history, stories I didn't have time to type using a keyboard/word processor set to be used by people who live in other countries (Catalonia and Central Europe in particular likely have very different drivers on the keyboards in their Internet cafes).

Town by the sea photo is Dubrovnik, Croatia.

As I've gone over this itinerary in detail, it seems we will be by the sea a lot. So here goes- in no particular order- this is where our adventures will take us:

London, Barcelona, New York, Los Angeles, Budapest, Venice, Italy. In Serbia our destinations include Belgrade, Podgorica. We will also be hitting Montenegro and the following in Croatia:
Dubrovnik, Split, Trogir & Plitvice Lakes National Park and Zagreb- as the final leg in Central Europe we will also be in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

In short, we look forward to lots of laughter and fun- just like these moments when we were cutting our wedding cake.


Photo of us by Margaret Speth.