It All Started With A Wedding
In the fall of 2004 I proposed to Huong. After the initial glow of engagement, it soon dawned on us that our wedding logistics posed some challenges. Her family resided in Western Pennsylvania and we were living in Miami. Huong wasn’t excited for a Western PA wedding and the odds of extended family traveling such a distance as Miami was low. So during a moment of….some might call it frustration….others might call it clarity…..Huong declared “let’s just get married in Florence”. As in Florence, Italy. I had never been to Italy. She had never been to Italy. Neither of us had vacationed overseas. We didn’t even own passports! But, as has been the case during our twenty years together, I fell in line with what she wanted to do and said “ok, let’s do it”. Happy (future) wife, happy life. You know the drill.
Why Florence, Italy? To this day I have no idea. She must have read something or seen a travel piece on tv. But this turn of events PERFECTLY captured the nature of our relationship. Apart from and prior to the meeting, we both made relatively conservative decisions and led conservative lives. Together, the sky was and is the absolute (expletive) limit. I would do anything for her, and she for me. I would move anywhere for her (and did!) and I would go anywhere with her. So when she blurted out “Florence”, I was like “why not?” I didn’t bat an eyelash. That’s how we have been since Day 1.
Before I met her, my career was spent working for “the man”. I made a nice living but began to feel caged. Once together, she planted the seeds of entrepreneurship in my mind and set my imagination free. For the first time, I became a problem solver and inventor. I launched an education technology company. She was climbing the corporate ladder and doing so with great success. We were creating a life together. None of this included travel…..until she uttered the word “Florence” in the fall of 2004.
We were complete rubes. I traveled to practically every state in the country for business and did so regularly, but I almost never traveled for leisure and never had gone anywhere internationally. But hey, I was going to plan a wedding in Italy myself. Don’t worry, I GOT THIS! Welp, to marry in Italy, one must run a bit of a bureaucratic gauntlet. Contact the local Italian Embassy here in the U.S., visit the U.S. embassy in Florence, visit the judge at the courthouse in Florence, “post” the wedding announcement in Florence. Finito! We’re married.
I didn’t make it past Step 1. The dang Italian Embassy would never answer their phone! Days and then weeks passed. What at the time was frustrating now makes me chuckle, and has since become representative of what makes Italy so charming to us. Italians do things on their time, at their speed. We ultimately decided to hire a Tuscany-based wedding planner. Best decision ever.
Outside of the wedding, the rest of our trip was ours to plan. Two nights in Paris, three nights in Venice, seven nights in Florence including a wedding, and then three nights in Rome before flying home….as newlyweds. In theory this all sounded wonderful. In execution it….it was a little uneven.
We set out for Europe in October of 2006. In Paris, we ran and laughed in the rain. But that was because we ended up not researching dining options and wandered far from our hotel, unable to decide where to eat. In Venice, we excitedly and successfully communicated with a clerk at a vaporetto (water taxi) stand with our
newly learned Italian phrases. But this was after originally thinking we were going to land at Marco Polo Airport and take a brief walk to the water’s edge for water transportation to our hotel. Instead we landed at Treviso Airport (Venice had a second airport, who knew?) and had to take a twenty minute bus ride from our inland airport to the vaporetto stand, completely bewildered by this geographic turn of events. In Florence, we drove the narrow lanes and piazzas while the bells rang and pigeons flew away from their positions on the ground….like we were in a De Beers diamond commercial. But while this scene was taking place, we were anxiously debating whether we were even driving on a road or a pedestrian area. “We’re going to get arrested! What are the Italian prisons like??” In Rome, we ate amazing pasta dishes next to beautiful millenia-old buildings. But we had no idea that there were so many other culinary delights the city had to offer and in neighborhoods not so touristy and over priced.
Ah, but that week in Florence. It was incredibly romantic, and it impacted us in a way where we knew we would never be the same. Our view of the world and our place in it would be forever changed.
On our wedding day, prior to the ceremony, we posed for photos. This was not a normal photo shoot however. Nadia, our wedding planner, had serious connections. One was with Ferrari, and they sent their photographer to shoot us for a couple of hours posing with five Ferrari sports cars of different models and eras, one of them the personal possession of Enzo Ferrari, the company’s founder. To thank us for our time and participation, the Ferrari rep then let us pick one of the five sports cars to drive for thirty minutes through the Tuscan hillside outside of Florence. I chose Enzo Ferrari’s, the 1964 250 GT Lusso.
After our joy ride we pulled up to our wedding location, which was the garden of a villa in the south of Florence across the River Arno, down the hill from Piazzale Michelangelo. We bade a fond farewell to the classic Ferrari, and made things official. With a violinist playing in the background, the service was conducted completely in Italian, very little of it understood by our untrained ears. I THINK we’re married??
The trip triggered a new mindset for us. Upon our return home, we found ourselves routinely hearkening back to memorable moments. The recounting of events in storytelling form was an elixir from the stresses of day to day life. We wanted more.
Hence the initiation of a calendar filled with travel. The more trips we took, the more seasoned we became. The more seasoned we became, the better planners we were. What began as one trip per year became two. Then three. And the trip itself was only part of the experience. The planning became a big event for us. We began creating spreadsheets where we would establish a spine for a trip and then assign responsibilities. I choose the countries and cities, research their history, and map out our excursions. Huong researches accommodations, whether they are Airbnb’s or hotels, and she also selects the restaurants. We pour wine, dine from a charcuterie board, open our laptops, and then research and document.
Both Huong and I are highly opinionated. We evaluate our travel excursions with a critical eye. So in 2017, when I retired from education technology pursuits, I said to her “what’s next?” She pointed to our passion for travel, how we have strong beliefs and good taste, and that this might prove beneficial to others. That was all I needed. The light bulb turned on over my head. My inventor mindset kicked in. Within weeks I drafted a long term plan, a plan that ultimately includes operating a travel-oriented business in Italy. I mean, why go halfway, right? But where to start? I had no background in the food and travel industry, nor did she. The logical place was our backyard. New York City. Looking out our bedroom window we saw incredible history and architecture, as well as tons of fantastic boutique restaurants. The idea of a tour for foodies was initiated. The tour began Memorial Day weekend, 2017, and has since risen in meteoric fashion in TripAvisor’s “things to do in New York City” rankings. In 2019 we received their Certificate of Excellence and in January of 2020 we earned Top 1% status. At publication we are listed #64 of 5,180 things to do in NYC.
Food and travel is a passion unlike anything else I have done professionally. So much so that, while it may totally sound cliche, it doesn’t feel like a job. I love heading down to the starting point of my food tour, eager to meet new friends. I love when people reach out to me, as they often do, for recommendations regarding overseas travel as well as restaurants and activities in New York City. I appreciate being asked, and I go the extra mile to offer information of substance.
Boy have we learned a lot since those clumsy early days. I hope you follow us through our experiences, enjoy our writing, and find yourselves, like us, in love with the world of food and travel.
