A wedding in L’Aquila
Thursday, September 11th, 2008I’m a bit overdue for updates from Italy, seeing as how Wendy and I are now in Turkey, but here’s the first of them anyway.
The reason we came to Europe from China in the first place (a rather large detour, since our original plan was to stay in Asia and go directly from Beijing to Nepal) was to see our good friend Mike from our tour guiding days get married to his Italian fiancee Silvia.
Last Friday we went to L’Aquila, a town of 60,000 people about 90 minutes drive from Rome, with nine other Rome-based friends of the groom – my close friends Paul, Tyson and Gabriel, as well as a few others I hadn’t seen in years and a few who I don’t know that well. L’Aquila is Silvia’s home town and I admit that I had not heard of it before Mike and her become involved. In sight-packed Italy, L’Aquila barely rates a mention in guide books and there are no tourists there whatsoever, but it has a beautiful old town with a Spanish castle, cobble-stone streets and a dozen historic churches, and I quite enjoyed my first visit there. It’s the kind of town that makes you appreciate how fascinating Europe really is – if it was a colonial town in the Americas it would be as famous as Cartagena.
The wedding was on Saturday evening in San Silvestre, one of the aforementioned churches. It’s a beautiful place, Romanesque in style with a simple yet stunning interior of stone arches and centuries-old frescoes. It wasn’t too grandiose or large – a perfect size for the 80 or so guests – but it was daunting enough to make me nervous just being a guest! (In contrast, our own Italian wedding last year was in a much smaller medieval monastery opposite the Baths of Caracalla in Rome). It was the first Catholic wedding for either Wendy or me, and it was a bit awkward as I didn’t know how it would play out and wasn’t familiar with the prayers. But it was a great experience to see an Italian Catholic wedding in any case and the guests who have been to a few said it was a beautiful ceremony. Not content with the usual rice-throwing shenanigans, we pelted the bride and groom with uncooked pasta when they exited the church and barely let up when the ‘Basta!’ cries started.
The reception was at the most exclusive restaurant in L’Aquila on large and picturesque grounds outside the old city. It went until 5am and was an absolute riot; the highlights included Paul being first into the pool fully clothed as everyone had predicted and Paul and Tyson’s English/Italian best men speech that had us in stitches.
The next day, all of us light on sleep and most of us rather hungover, we headed back to Rome. For Wendy and I it was a last chance to explore our favourite city – until the next wedding, that is…
It was a rather unusual choice of activity yesterday afternoon, but since it wasn’t a nice day above ground – in the five days since we left China, Beijing has had three blue-sky days compared with one for Paris – we decided to check out the ‘Egouts de Paris’ and go on a guided tour of the sewers. It was pretty smelly and disgusting (the picture to the right doesn’t need much further explanation), but actually quite interesting as well. Some interesting sewer facts we picked up:
Moving right along, on Monday we visited the gothic cathedral at Chartres, about an hour outside of Paris, and the basilica of Saint-Denis in the eponymous suburb in northern Paris. The interior of the Chartres cathedral is very dark but the stained-glass windows, which tell biblical stories (such as that of Noah) and much later ones (such as Charlemagne’s recovery of Mary’s veil), are impressive. The old town itself is also quite attractive but is completely overshadowed by the church, which is one of the most famous gothic (or ‘French style’ as gothic architecture was called in gothic times) cathedrals in Europe.
After the chaos of Beijing, the excitement of the Olympic Games and the exhaustion of working every day for two months without a day off, we needed a holiday. And so we find ... 
For me, Paris will never be able to top Rome, but it's still a beautiful city with a ... 
Nick