It was 11pm and I was standing alone outside the Lecce train station with two luggages, two bags, no ride, no money, and Lecce’s Wikitravel entry loaded on my iphone, warning me about Lecce’s rip-off taxis. Well, thank heavens. I had phone service.
I had just endured three days and two nights of continuos travel to get to Lecce, Italy (in the region of Puglia) from San Diego, CA, for the wedding of two of my best friends: an Italian bride from Lecce, and an American groom from Buffalo. They met on Valentine’s Day at a party at my apartment in Bologna, years ago. I couldn’t wait for the nuptials, and the celebration, but mostly to be reunited with some of my best friends.
So despite obvious fatigue and ambiguity about the next few hours of my life, and the lack of fairytale charm that was driving my current travel story, being back in Italy after five long months away and the promise of what was to come was enough to keep my spirits up.
I was the first out-of-town guest to arrive in Lecce. I made it to the B&B in an overpriced cab (Wikitravel is always right) and slept in a damp cave-like hallway of a room in a bottom bunk. Still unfazed, I woke up the next morning and tried my best to play host to the string of foreigners arriving by bus and train, depending on whether they flew in on a budget flight to nearby Brindisi, or endured a long train ride from a major airport. We were stuck like sardines, eleven of us, in the small B&B with two bathrooms with no central access. But we were happy nonetheless to be reunited once again. Many of us had studied arts management together, while others were students or teachers in other capacities. But we all had at least three things in common: the bride, the groom, and we weren’t from Lecce.
That evening, in the absence of the tradition of a bachelor/bachelorette party, the bride had organized a pre-party to celebrate with friends. I’d been tasked with preparing a “Bologna style gag” for the occasion. Meaning that, because Bologna is a university town, it is famous for graduation traditions involving a significant level of public humiliation, such as printing out bad quality, embarrassing pictures of the graduate, writing funny captions on them, and posting them on the streets for the public to enjoy. When the groom did this for my Bologna graduation, my landlord sent me a congratulations. “How did you know I graduated?” I asked him. “Well, I saw your pictures on the street of course,” he responded. Eeeek.
So this was my natural choice for the gag for the “quasi bachelor/ette” party. Three of us from the “foreigner” cohort spent nearly an hour plastering Lecce with embarrassing photos of the couple on this busy Friday night in town.
We died of laughter as the pedestrians accepted our “art” with gusto, tourists and locals stopping to enjoy the photos as they headed out for the evening. The public humiliation continued as I managed to get the bride and groom to cross-dress during a “soon to be newlywed” game (photos not included for the sake of the long-term reputation of the couple, sorry guys ;)).
We made it to bed at a fairly decent hour in anticipation of the big event. Venturing out the next morning – the Saturday of the wedding – in the heart of wedding season in gorgeous, baroque Lecce, we seemed to run into a wedding around every corner.
Due to this competitive wedding season, our bride had “settled” on her third choice for the wedding ceremony: Lecce’s duomo.
Let’s just say Lecce’s duomo is not your average duomo, and not your average place to get married, especially by American standards. It is, for lack of a more sophisticated word, immense, and usually packed with tourists. I was dumbfounded that it was even an option to get married in a place of such beauty and history.
We arrived early for the ceremony, dwarfed by the scale of the duomo, and feeling as though we had finally stepped into the pages of the fairytale. Except, are grooms actually nervous in fairytales? We tried our best to console him. The bride was on time, but the organist was late.
Other than the late organist, they managed to get hitched without a hitch. The American “assistant priest” even offered comic relief for all as he embraced his big moment on the duomo altar by taking pictures during the ceremony.
After the ceremony, the bride and groom greeted their adoring family and friends on the steps of the duomo,
tossing the bouquet into our crowd on the edge of the immense piazza,
which ended in a surprising steal by one of the guys, who was teased endlessly after by the bride’s brothers. More priest photo-taking,
and a long string of well-wishing and congratulations, during which the bride’s nana (grandma) took a breather in the coveted limousine (not such a common car in Italy).
We got our pic with the beautiful bride, and then we finally set out for the reception.
The party took place in a castle called Castello Monaci on a piece of country land outside of Lecce. As we pulled up at dusk, it felt like we were arriving at Cinderella’s castle set on the backdrop of the beautiful Pugliese landscape.
First wine tasting in the museum foyer (another building on the estate),
followed by an antipasto buffet in the castle,
complete with all of the bride and groom’s favorite things,
and a few of our own too. 😉
We foolishly thought the antipasto buffet was dinner, but our plates were soon pulled away and a several course wine paired dinner began.
We were all feeling well taken care of.
As we savored the last tasty morsels of dinner, we were beckoned outside for the cake cutting happening in tandem with traditional Pugliese Pizzica and Tarantella music and dance, complete with a traditional band.
Tambourines were ringing as women threw off their heels and ran for the improvised dance floor in the damp grass, everyone trading partners and teaching the little guests and foreigners how to join in.
And just as we all imagined that life couldn’t get much better, we were ushered into another wing in the castle, and greeted by a dessert buffet that could only be matched in my wildest imagination by a scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Off the dessert bar was an enclosed glass patio where the DJ, the official dance floor, and an open bar awaited.
The grappa was amazing.
And then, just as the clock chiming midnight snuck up on Cinderella, before we knew it 4am had rudely arrived and ended our magical night. The bride and groom retreated to their castle chambers, and we headed off in the Volkswagen of one of the waitresses, as the last taxi in the region had already called it a night. Not exactly a magical carriage ride, and returning to our damp and dark B&B wasn’t so magical either. Reality had arrived, but that was ok. We can’t be too greedy about our special experiences…we got enough of them tonight to even stow some away in reserves for awhile.
And that, my friends, is the end of this fairytale, at least for now…
As I start out on this new adventure to Italy and beyond for the summer, I can’t help thinking it is going to be a good one. But really, I’ve already had more than my fair share of adventures, from my perch in a swinging TSA bassinet on my first flight from my birthplace in Togo, West Africa, to my multiple cross-country drives, and starting life anew in my thirties to pursue a graduate degree in Bologna, Italy. If I never had another adventure, I really couldn’t complain, and I’d still be fiercely grateful for all of it.
After nearly a year of adjustment to being back home in San Diego, California, and getting used to not being a perpetual traveler, I am now off from my university job for the semester, and therefore back to my old traveling ways. At the moment I am lounging in an armchair at JFK, on my way to a wedding near Lecce in Puglia, Italy, which forms the heel of the boot of Italy. I have been to Puglia one time previously, and the abundance of sun, vegetables, and unique architecture made it a favorite of mine immediately.
Combine a beautiful place like Puglia with a traditional Italian wedding of two of your best friends, with some of your other best friends in attendance, and you’ve got an epic event on your hands. Ironically, these two love birds met for the first time at my apartment in Bologna. Several years ago, an American friend of mine convinced me to throw a “day after Valentine’s Day party” for singles to meet. That particular friend is still single, but two of my other friends – an American and an Italian – met at that party, and the rest was history, as they say.
Some of my favorite travelers, also part of the same friend group, are currently en route to the wedding as I write this. I will meet one of them in a few hours at the Emirates check-in desk at JFK, after my godmother takes me to a Peruvian dinner in Queens to fill the time of my long layover. Another flight and a bus and a train later, we will all be in Puglia together. And that will kick off this summer with a bang.
I only hope that you all will experience time with loved ones and/or some wonderful adventures this summer as well. And if you don’t have anything planned yet, well, get to it!
Stay tuned!