After earning 2 weeks paid vacation from our jobs, we knew it was time to take our first international trip together. We narrowed it down to wanting to head to a European country. Initially, we thought we would visit England. My mother is from Liverpool, England and I have lots of various family members all over the country. England seemed like a great choice for us. They speak English, the food isn’t too “exotic” and we had both dreamed about visiting London since our teenage years. We even thought about tacking on Paris or Ireland. For some reason, it just didn’t feel like the right time to visit England. Amsterdam? Berlin? We looked at a map of Europe and after much deliberation, we decided on Italy. As soon as we chose Italy, we knew it was the right decision.

Andrew is half Italian and my favorite food is pizza with a lot of parmesan cheese on top. It was a win-win situation. We planned for months. We were flying in and out of the Rome airport. We chose to visit Rome, Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Cinque Terre. Although we didn’t speak Italian, we researched and found out that a lot of Italians also speak decent English. I wanted to see so many sights in Italy, from the Venice canals to the cliffs of Cinque Terre. Andrew wanted to understand his heritage more and traveling Italy for 2 weeks would definitely help him achieve that. With only 20 pounds on our backs, we set off for our first international trip together. Needless to say, Italy did not disappoint us.

Before we left for Italy, we became engaged to be married! Due to the timing of it all, we ended up having our engagement photos taken in Venice, Italy by our good friend Paolo. He is a photographer and videographer living right outside of Venice, Italy.