Romancin' in Italy

The proposal .. everyone has one...and they are usually more sentimental to you than others .. but they are still fun to read, and so, without further ado, our condensed engagement.

We were in Italy for my best friend's wedding. We flew in on a Tuesday morning and traveled down to Sorrento to spend a couple of days at Pompeii, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast. Danielle was getting married on that Saturday in Positano. I will admit that I hoped this would be it - we had been dating for over a year and a half and had come a long way in our relationship. I didn't want to make this trip about wishful thinking - and so after the first couple of days of nothing happening, I completely dropped the idea all together and just relaxed. As you can see in the following pictures -- we just started enjoying ourselves.

Yummy Pizza!!

JT with all the luggage - we were waiting for our bus to our hotel, Il Nido.

Our Hotel in Sorrento In Pompeii - he absolutely loved this place!

Our Feet after 5 1/2 hours in Pompeii On our way to Naples

Relaxing with some yummy cappuccini

We packed up and traveled 45 mins south of Sorrento to arrive in Positano. This is where the nuptials of our dear friend would be held. The wedding was beautiful and we celebrated late into the evening. The next morning we left early to take a taxi back up to Rome for our last two days in Italy. The taxi was full of other wedding guests who decided to stay at the same hotel and so we all checked out the Colosseum and Trevi Fountain that evening.

Hotel Nardizzi, Rome

In the tiny lift!

The beauty of Ancient RomeThe next day we decided to do our own thing and slept in until 1. It was amazing! After all the running around we were doing - we were more than happy to just sleep! We left for the Vatican around 3 and slipped into the Museum to check things out. Since it was close to closing time we were fortunate to not have as many tourist around. We climbed the Cupola and saw all of Rome that we could see - then headed to St. Peter's Basilica. Finally they rang the bells and told us we needed to leave so we wandered into the courtyard of the Vatican. It was 7:00 and we were getting pretty hungry. J asked if I wanted to go throw coins in the fountain and then we would grab something to eat. It sounded like a wonderful plan to me! We walked over there and he handed me the coin container he had been carrying around all week. I shook it and informed him there was nothing in there. He said there should be 2 coins left - he checked that morning. I shook it again and shook my head...then decided to open it up and slid my finger in there only to touch cold metal. I gasped! He dropped to one knee and I just stared at him. He said all these beautiful things that I can't remember because I was so shocked and just pulled the ring out to look at it. It was beautiful .. absolutely beautiful...and so was he. He finally asked me to say something and I just said, "It doesn't fit." And we both started laughing and he got up and we had tears in our eyes. Life has a funny way of figuring itself out before you do...and we spent our last night engaged and enjoying some fine wine while we planned our future.