On our way back from Florence, we stopped for an afternoon walkaround in Montepulciano.
Montepulciano is another one of the seemingly countless charming hilltop towns of Tuscany. Dalia and I didn’t manage to get here on our honeymoon and I feel like I’ve been haunted by Montepulciano wine labels ever since! It seemed like the perfect occasion to take in the town, enjoy the Christmas market and festivities and grab a quick lunch.
It was both a bit steeper and colder than we anticipated. And being a sunny Sunday, we also underestimated how busy it would be and how tight the lunch reservation market would be. Nonetheless, we were happy to tick another Italian bucket list destination off and see what all the wine and fuss was about.
After two days spent absorbing the beauty and food of Rome, we decided to get into the countryside and revisit one of our favourite honeymoon stops – San Gimignano.
On our honeymoon, we ended up in San Gimignano completely by accident as we were probably the only humans ever to try to get to our agriturismo farmhouse by the public transit of Tuscany. Take good note: don’t ever try that. In any case, after a few hours of winding bus journeys, we found ourselves in this magical walled city, eating fabulous gelato and not too mad about the detour.
This planned trip was much less stressful and being off-season, the town itself was calm, cute and quiet – perfect for a bright Saturday meander.
Of course we tried San Gimignano’s award winning gelato. Of course I ate wild boar tagliatelle and bought a few bottles of wine. And some additional belts and purses may also have been purchased. Our family Christmas journey to Tuscany continued with success!
A few weeks after my mom arrived, my younger brother joined us in Rome too. Ever since finding out we would be posted to Rome, I had hoped we could reunite here for Christmas and thankfully, despite ongoing covid challenges, this year, on my side of the family, we were able to make it happen.
After a week of jet-lag recovery for my brother, we packed up for a weekend road trip to Florence.
I’ve long been drawn to international work and life and even though I’ve lived overseas for a handful of years, family and friend visits have been relatively rare. I always hoped that my family would be able to see places and have experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise have if I ended up with an international career. I never entirely dreamed it would start in Italy but it is a wonderful country to share with family and Florence, our lowkey favourite city in Italy, was a great place to begin.
Our 14th century vaulted Airbnb apartment was wonderfully located near the city’s Christmas Market and easy walk to the Duomo and the famed Ponte Vecchio. We also ate more meat than in the last six months in Rome combined. The Tuscans sure do appreciate their local game and we did not complain.
We fell in love with Florence all over again and wondered why it took so long to get back here again. We left after three nights full of gratitude, protein and leather products! Can’t wait to get back.
On my first visit to Rome in 2015, after a few days in the city I felt I needed a break and Orvieto came up on many lists for best town for a day trip outside of Rome. I wasn’t disappointed on my first visit and found the scenic tranquility exactly the tonic I needed from the big city.
Since then, Dalia and I also stayed in the scenic hilltop town on our honeymoon four years ago. Needless to say, Orvieto holds a special place in our hearts and was an easy choice when considering where to go with our first set of visitors in Rome, Dalia’s brother and a friend from Ottawa.
Orvieto is just over an hour from Rome on one of a dozen daily trains. A funiculaire and bus take you to the main piazza in a few minutes from the train station.
The town is compact, full of great dining and shopping options and has incredible lookouts in several directions. We sat down to a slow food lunch of truffle pasta, rabbit and whatever fabulous bottle of wine the waiter recommended.
The hilight of Orvieto is definitely the Duomo. Somehow I remember being underwhelmed by this Church on previous trips, but I was glad to correct my internal record inside this massive, impressive and can’t miss site.
We even caught the tail end of a beautiful wedding ceremony and may have gotten a bit misty eyed remembering our own wedding and previous honeymoon visit. Now living just down the highway, with a beautiful baby in tow, feeling entirely blessed and grateful.
This weekend marks our fourth wedding anniversary and notably the first as parents. In celebration, we had booked three nights at an agriturismo (hotel/farm) castle, with swimming pool, outside of Florence and then one night in the heart of Firenze. A nod to the four years ago visit we enjoyed during our monthlong honeymoon it Italy. I envisioned a relaxing day spent splashing around the pool, picking up my pen while Aleksander napped and reflecting on life as a married couple after a first child arrives. It’s a topic that Dalia and I have been discussing and dissecting quite a bit in the weeks leading up to our anniversary. And one that we both felt had not been shared with us by almost anyone, as first time parents, neither by personal acquaintances nor public figures.
Alas, after finishing work on Friday, we loaded up our recently purchased and serviced Subaru Outback and headed onto the A1 highway for a couple hundred beautiful Tuscan kilometres to Florence. If the foreshadowing hasn’t yet become apparent, our fairytale weekend didn’t get very far down the road. Little more than 30 minutes outside of Rome, the dashboard temperature indicator turned red, soon followed by a mysterious liquid explosion under the hood, then the three of us on the side of the 100 degree hot highway waiting for a two.
Two very friendly, helpful and modestly bilingual Italian service people showed up within half-an-hour and took us through the charming town of Orte, letting us know that our weekend plans would be heading in reverse, back to Rome via the train station. Update about the car to follow next week.
It was one of the most clear and salient ‘dad in the world’ moments I’ve had since being in Italy and somehow fit perfectly into the theme we had been reflecting on: living the unexpected hour to hour, day to day – every hour, every day.
Since about 24 hours before Aleksander was born, Dalia and I started the race of keeping him well, fed, thriving, comfortable, dry, clean, happy, rested, safe, loved, dressed, calm and secure. We didn’t exactly know we were starting such a race as first time parents but now, almost nine months later, there haven’t proven to be many breaks from it. Add in work for me, plus a pandemic, plus a move to a foreign country and it can, at times, feel like a triathlon that you were dropped into when you were just casually on the way for your morning coffee.
In comparison, our courtship and three some years of marriage were a stroll. Not always along the beach, but at least in the woods, or alongside a canal, or in the worst case, a partially shovelled sidewalk. We were fortunate in that way. People talked about the challenges of marriage, especially in the first year, and we’d usually share a glance and really not understand what they mean.
Well that stroll into triathlon nano-moment-transition has often left us out of breath, occasionally out of sync and rarely, out of it all. Nothing is as it was. And we’re constantly trying to navigate the new hyphenated reality of married couple-parents.
Weekends like this one we had planned allow us to momentarily take our feet off the gas, assumer a more leisurely pace and re-connect as a trio. Hence, the extra sourness of possibly having bought a silver Subaru lemon.
Just this past week, I began twice weekly Italian classes (nice thing), continued to study French grammar after Aleksander falls asleep (necessary for work thing), got an Italian text message saying that neither our cable or internet bills had been paid (baffling thing), tried unsuccessfully for hours to contact someone at my online-only European bank (infuriating thing) and kept the marriage-baby-work train on the rails (triathlon thing).
Then the newly purchased and recently serviced car goes bust. The dad-in-the-world highs are absolutely phenomenal but it’s not always only gelato, castles and sunsets on aquamarine seas.
Dad In The World 