Heipei

I like to surprise myself (and you, fellow remaining reader). This is the first of many posts in which I’ll show some highlights of the last few months. It starts with our honeymoon.

June 2013 – Tuscany

In the last post I told you that Katrin and I (finally) got married, in May/June 2013. While there were some tense and stressful moments leading up to the weddings (civil and catholic), all of that was soon but forgotten. The wonderful summer we had last year, getting married, celebrating with all of our close friends, the honeymoon are memories I will cherish for a long time to come. You can view all of the photos on Flickr.

For our honeymoon, Katrin and I decided to go to Italy. We usually visit big cities or go hiking on vacation, so Tuscany promised to be something a little bit different. Since this was our honeymoon we had done the unthinkable and booked the four hotels for the ten days in advance. We managed to offset that conservatism by taking the car to our first hotel in Levanto (Cinque-Terra), which is a 1100km drive from Aachen. We had played with the thought of staying in Switzerland for one night, but in the end we simply headed out early, only stopped twice and managed to get to Levanto in one day’s time. Levanto was nice, a very dense and lively city without an overwhelming amount of tourism. The landscape around Levanto however paled in comparison to the rolling hills of Tuscany.

Our next hotel was in Castellina in Chianti in the heart of Tuscany. Words can’t describe the beauty of the landscape and the old villages and cities, so I’ll let photos stand for themselves. We stayed at a small hotel a kilometer into a remote dirt road. The landscape, the atmosphere and the food each night were simply sublime.

During the days, Katrin and I took trips to cities in Tuscany, most being within a one-hour drive. We saw Siena, Florence, Lucca, Montalcino, Montepulciano, San Gimignano, Castiglione della Pescaia and a lot of other small villages along the way. Most of the time we did nothing except stroll through the town endlessly. Sometimes we tasted (and frequently bought) the local wines, and we usually had Caprese at least once a day.

The last hotel we stayed it was in Castiglione della Pescaia, a small coastal city with an incredibly beautiful old city/fortress and an endless white beach. This place was a break from the inland locations we had seen up until then, but it was still unmistakably Tuscany. Our days were spent at the beach (unless it got too hot) and at night we strolled into the city and had dinner at one of the excellent restaurants.

So, unless the photos didn’t make it completely obvious: This was probably the most beautiful vacation we have taken to date. Katrin and I were simply blown away by the beauty of Tuscany and will surely return. Yes, Paris was really nice, and British Columbia is something completely different, but in terms of simply enjoying the pleasures life has to offer, there is no better place than in front of a plate of local cuisine, with a nice red wine, in the historic center of a Tuscan village.