My youngest brother’s three children each decided, in 2018, individually or collectively, to get married in 2019. Whether or not this was as a result of consensus, I do not know, but it was mercifully before the advent of the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic that put an end to foreign travel for the next two years. The decisions were providential because the weddings were to take place first in India, where one nephew was to marry in March; then the second in Italy, where another nephew was to wed in June, and finally, the third in Elora, Ontario, where my niece was to marry in October. It was to be a busy year.
The first wedding, at Carmel Hill Monastery Church in Trivandrum in Kerala, was part of a three-day well-organized affair of laughter, family well-being, and memorable events, with 200 guests from the Indian diaspora in Dubai and Singapore, and others from as far away as Australia, Seattle, Buffalo, Toronto, and London in attendance. The bride’s parents were generously hospitable, the open-air reception in the grounds of a resort in nearby Kovalam unforgettable, with the ocean behind us whispering under the palms, and the food throughout miraculously varied and good.
The Italian wedding was to be held at the Romantik Hotel in Le Silve di Armenzano in Umbria, not far from Assisi. My wife Louise and I made the wedding an excuse for a visit to Venice, Firenze, Siena, Rome, and any interesting points in between. Venice was as beautiful and rewarding as enthusiastic reports have consistently and accurately claimed, as was Firenze (Florence). We left the latter after a last view from the famous belvedere overlooking the River Arno with its panorama of the city with its striking Duomo (cathedral) glittering below us, for a rendez-vous with my son, his wife, and my two-year-old granddaughter Audrey in the picturesque village of Montaione in Tuscany, equidistant from Florence and Siena, knowing we would need to find a place to stay before we met them there. The clumsy Jeep Renegade we rented, now made in Italy as a result of Fiat’s acquisition of Jeep, seemed unsuited to the Italian autostrada: perhaps it was homesick for off-roading on Texan trails… As we did not have a reservation, we suspected this might be problematic on a Saturday night, and it was. There was no room at the inns of Poggibonsi, nor in overcrowded San Gimignano, nor even in the half-dozen we stopped at in the outskirts of Siena, but as accommodation was available in North Siena’s Garden Hotel for Sunday and Monday nights, we decided to reserve, and then press on to Montaione and stay the night with my son there, earlier than scheduled, arriving at the Borgo Cassacia, a former police station converted into a luxurious small self-catering holiday home Audrey’s dad had found on the internet, set on a hill above a vineyard. As our hosts were preparing to leave for a visit to the nearby hill town of Volterra some 25 kilometres away to the south-west, we joined them in their Fiat Tipo wagon on the trip.
Lake Corbara in Italy
