Italy..... It's Amore!

A week after Jon's return to Germany, we headed to Italy for what we called our "second honeymoon." We stayed in the northern region of Italy, in the Veneto, for 10 glorious days! This is the region where I studied abroad for a semester while in college, and through our connection with this program (and my parents' friend and owner of the school, Al) we got to stay in a faculty apartment for the duration of our visit. It was an incredible time of being together with plenty of laughs and adventures experiencing the dolce vita. After a snowy and overcast drive through Germany and Austria, the sun broke through when entering Italy proving that everything really is more bella in Italia (I might be somewhat biased).

Our first day, we decided to hike Mt. Grappa, which looms over the towns of towns of Paderno, Crespano and Bassano del Grappa. Although it is normally an all day hike, we didn't embark until the early afternoon only wearing our running clothes.

There wasn't much running considering the steep grade, and we even had to climb the "Iron Ferrata" or Iron Way, which is a cable nailed into the side of a cliff to help you climb.

It was pretty fightening considering it was straight up for a while, but Jon was an excellent encourager. Once at the top, the views were incredible at sunset.

Because we weren't able to enjoy the views for too long, needing to head back down before it was completely dark, we returned to the top of Mt. Grappa the following day. But, this time we drove.

We toured the impressive World War I monument at the top and enjoyed a picnic lunch just off the windy, narrow road that snakes across the mountain.

The next day we had planned to go to Venice and awoke to a snow-covered Grappa Valley. It was amazing - the previous two days were perfectly clear with plenty of sunshine, and the following morning the country-side was completely blanketed with snow. After staring in disbelief at the winter wonderland outside, we decided to leave for Venice. We drove to the nearby town of Castelfranco and took the train from there.

Walking out of the train station, Jon was in complete shock. Although I had told him how amazing Venice was, he was in awe of this city on water. We took a water bus to St. Mark's Square, dropped off our bags and had an amazing two days exploring this fascinating city. Papparazzi Jon got a little carried away in this pircture perfect city and took endless photos, but I'm only sharing a few of my most favorite.

St. Mark's Square at night....

St. Mark's Square during the day with the basilica in the behind.

Jon was attacked by the brazen pigeons while eating his daily ciabata sandwich.

Besides getting incredibly lost navigating our way through the narrow alleyways and canals, we visited St. Mark's cathedral, the Doge's Palace and of course, had to take a gondola ride.


After our trip to Venice, we decided to explore some of the nearby towns in the Veneto region.

We went to the town of Bassano del Grappa, which is popular for their landmark bridge and landmark distillery that makes the digestive, grappa, or hellfire in a bottle.

After touring Bassano del Grappa, we went to Marostica where we experienced a gourmet dinner in a castle the night before. Above this medieval town sits the ruins of a castle that has now been converted to a restaurant. We climbed to the top on a stone path through olive orchards.

After a week of divine sunshine and exploring the beautiful towns of the Veneto, we traveled north to the heart of the Dolomites.... Cortina. It snowed our entire drive to Cortina and we were excited about the opportunity to ski on fresh powder the first weekend the ski runs would be open this season.

Although it was challenging skiiing through the intense powder, we had so much fun and the snow even let up and the sun broke through for a couple hours. This is such a beautiful town and I can see why so many people vacation here each winter.

It was sad to leave our Italian adventure, but then again we were only heading back to Germany. How bad could it be? We're still in Europe, the Christmas markets would be in full swing, the holiday season is near, but best of all.... we're together. We really ARE living the dolce vita!