Bella figura

My guide books tell me that it's important to look good in Italy. This is great news because I love clothes, and any excuse to dress well is fine with me. When we went to France four years ago we lived out of backpacks for two weeks (my idea) which was easy and fun, but it also meant that we never really dressed well. (We followed the advice of Rick Steves - a generally reliable travel source - and wore dark slacks, shoes, and shirts everywhere we went so as not to look sloppy or conspicuously American. He was right about one thing. We never looked sloppy, however we did look boring. Like a couple of Rick Steves-reading dorks wearing slacks everywhere they went in France.) Here is a packing list that I plan to follow for our trip to Italy. Based on past experience it seems to have the right balance of practical and attractive options. I would love to also add the following pieces:

I will wear this dress while Tim and I walk arm in arm here:

I will wear this while we browse in the market here:

And I will wear this while we sun ourselves here:

And in my dreams I would wear these the entire time:

**Thanks for sending these amazing dresses my way, Van! They are too good not to include in this post!**

 Mod Cloth

 Mod Cloth

Because it's awesome

Thanks for sending this, Grant! Threadless t-shirt

Chiappas from Lucca

Planning a trip like this one means making a lot of choices. Right now we're trying to decide where to go during our time in Italy. It's exciting, but it's daunting too. We are not the most decisive of couples. We read and research, discuss, debate, and read and discuss some more. We are just so interested in every place, and we want to make the best decisions possible since this is a lot of money and vacation time we're dealing with. So, we're always looking for ways to narrow things down. And we just had an exciting discovery that has helped us!

As we have begun planning our trip I've been thinking back to the few, precious details my Grandpa was able to give me about the Italian branch of our family tree. Grandpa Petty gave a careful account (until his final years the man had a razor sharp memory and he always had his facts straight) and my eager little brain sucked in every word. I hadn’t forgotten any of it, and I believed everything he said, but he hadn't been able to tell me what part of Italy they came from and I have been wondering about it ever since I was a girl.

So yesterday on a whim I searched “genealogy Chiappa” and the number two (!) link that popped up on Google read as follows: Re: PETTY, CHIAPPA, ROBINSON, GIBBONS. Unbelievable! Someone out there inquired at ancestry.com about research on the Chiappa name and another person responded with a bunch of information collected from the Hallet Surname Board in Bermuda! Where my Grandpa Petty's family lived for several generations!

The details were fascinating (and totally congruent with what my Grandpa had told me twenty years ago). Pietro Chiappa was born in Lucca, Italy around 1830. He was an experienced stonemason and came to Bermuda as a young man where he did work on Trinity Church. In 1894 his oldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth Chiappa, married Robert Horris Petty. Their son was my Grandpa’s father, Elmo Petty.

Finally, an answer to where our Italian family came from! I didn’t think I could be more excited, but then I searched Lucca, Italy to see if we might want to make it part of our trip. Here are some photos.

In our guidebook Lucca is in the section titled "Small Gems". It's a walled city in the hills of northern Tuscany. Certain descriptors keep popping up in everything I read about the place, like: charismatic, elegant, eccentric, having sumptuous architecture, and a close relationship with the bountiful countryside. So, we're sold. We were already planning to spend time in Tuscany, and Lucca sounds like our kind of town. A pin has been placed on our Google map, and I'm already dreaming of experiencing the town where the Chiappas started out.

Iniziare!

I’ve never appreciated surprises – it’s the anticipation of good things that I love. Counting down the days, planning, imagining…it thrills me. And because he knows me so well, my amazing husband has given me the greatest graduation present ever – a trip to Italy! This summer! And I get to spend every day between now and then anticipating the adventure!!

Italy has always been a place of romance, in my mind. When I was a little girl, my grandpa told me about his grandparents who came from Italy and worked as stonemasons in the New World (their name was Chiappa). Though I am only 1/16 Italian, I have always been proud of them and dreamed of seeing the land they once called home. I read books about Italy for fun. I drew maps of the country (seriously). I covered my walls with posters of pristine beaches and rolling countryside. When we were in college, Tim studied abroad in Tuscany for a semester and we sent countless letters back and forth across the Atlantic. We fell in love through those letters, and when he came home he asked me to be his wife. Now, the promise of a slower pace of life has captured my imagination – meals eaten al fresco, long walks in the country, cooking with fresh local food, siesta, swimming in the sea…I can’t wait to experience it all with my love.

So, in the spirit of delicious anticipation, I have created a blog so we can keep a catalogue of photos, ideas, and places we’d like to visit, and just generally be excited about the upcoming trip. Of course I also plan to have a countdown (once we have a departure date), as well as an Italian word/phrase of the day to help us expand our vocab. Check out our Google Map (at right) for more details on where we are headed.

Ciao! Let the adventure begin!