Taooftash - Final part of Matrimonial Marathon

There is not much to say about Rome that hasn't already been said, it is dirty, busy, chaotic and contains so much history that it makes your head spin.

We spent one of our days there at the Vatican, well mostly outside of it, queuing actually. Tash had elected to take full control of Amelia's cultural European education for the Rome section of the trip and announced a full itinerary of 'proper' sites of historical and 'Tash'ical' value that would need to be visited (proportionally we spent more of our time searching for a shoe shop that she had seen when we were last in Rome 4 years ago than at the Colosseum, hence my choice of words here - like you expected anything else from the girl!). As she was now official Tour Leader my usual Church of England protestations were overruled (St Paul's is free!) and we were treated to the finest queuing that the Catholic world could provide, the highlight of which came later in the morning when Amelia and I stood outside a "Vatican-tat-shop" and enjoyed the window display of many mini baby jesi, literally in every colour you could image (but not blue, curiously).

Back to the tour: History I like, Religion is a personal favourite as well, but together it is all a bit wrong and I loose interest, so after queuing for the first time in the day (80 minutes and three couples who observed the no queuing rule; you shuffle forward, I'll move across to block you, you move again, I go diagonal, block you again and make a comment just loud enough that you will know my disgust, all at a shuffling pace mind you - Tash was all out of 'the look' by 10:30am). We eventually made it into the pontiff's holy site, just in time for the atheist in the group to go and make his way to the nearest holy chamber for a sit down religious experience.

After this unplanned stop off, we gradually made our way through the numerous ostentatiously painted rooms that make up the Vatican Museum and fought our way along the lengthy tourist compacted map room, nee corridor ("how odd that an organisation that denied that the world was round, would have a map room" I patronisingly commented...... and got told to shut up by Tash). Carrying on the toiletry theme, whilst standing in line to get through one of the doors, there was a sudden loud PAAARRRRRP and following bad smell, when we regained our composure we decided that the said "holy trumpet" had been produced by a Japanese tourist standing in front of us, probably a Shinto Buddhist.

We were in the museum to have a look at the Sistine Chapel, on finally getting there it closely resembled a departure lounge, people milling about in no general direction, others trying to find some comfortable personal space, hot, humid and close. The biggest distraction here was the security guards who persisted in making gestures, claps and other loud noises to remind people that they should be reverend and quiet here, ahh the catholic irony........ The painting, though grand in design, is very in keeping with the unnecessary decoration found in the Vatican, not very nice, a bit chav actually.

As far as we could work out, Amelia is rather quiet after all, she found Rome to be a very pleasant experience. It wasn't our initial intention, however it became a bit obvious later on, that we had slowly indoctrinated her into the Tash and Mark, and therefore Italian way of thinking: get up and find somewhere decent to have coffee, do something interesting until lunch, decide if lunch is going to be big or small and act on it. Do something interesting for the afternoon, but not too physical. Go home and sleep (Tash), or(read (Mark). Decide where have dinner and find somewhere to have an aperitif on the way. Eat as much nice food as you can, discuss whether you can eat desert (gelato), eat said dessert (gelato). Walk home, but stop off for a drink on the way. Wake up, start again.

The main reason for being in Italy again was to attend Francesca and Alessandro's wedding on the Saturday, so we had to get from Rome to Verona, always up for a challenge, we hired a car. Mini Ken was on fine form directing us out of the Roman metropolis and on to the motorway (autostrada). His work was so good in fact that we ignored his impassioned pleas for us to exit at Verona Nord and carried on towards Germany in the misguided hope that we would discover the more convenient Verona Est turn-off, which it turns out is on the East - West motorway around Verona , not the North - South one we were on. Still if I must get lost, Verona is a good place to do it.

We also discovered that I am susceptible to E numbers and sugar rushes, this only became apparent (and then really apparent!) after I had worked my way through the XL bag of "travel" M&M's we had in the car, unfortunately it also coincided with the above navigational issue, so as Tash was driving at this point, Laura (Francesca's twin sister) got the pleasure of a 'where do we go now?' phone call from me, mid sugar rush.

"Ciao Tash"
"helloLauraitisnotTashitismeMark"
"eh, hi mark come va?"
"finethankslistenwearedrivinguptotheVeronaNorthexitanddontknowifweshouldcarryonuntilVeronaEast"
"oh"
"dontwanttorushyouoranythingbuttheVeronaNorthturnoffisjustaheadKaribah!"
"what! oh carry (something in Italian, I had really confused her at this point), yes, Verona East"
"okgoodwe'lltakethatandseeyousoon....click"

I calmed down by the time we got to the hotel (it was an hour later), much to the disappointment of the girls, as apparently, I was quite entertaining and we made our way over to the Bortesi house to meet the gang, who were all on good form, particularly Lorenzo who seemed to enjoy having the house filled with more females than usual.

The wedding started in fine fashion, Tash was delayed at the hairdressers and so when we arrived at the house we were greeted with everyone departing, not so bad, except we offered Piero a lift, who had been charged with videoing the event and so we also became the camera car. Piero put in a one man virtuoso cameraman/director performance, ushering us out of the gate so he could get a shot of Francesca leaving in the bridal car (a mini, very chic ), before jumping in our car and belting it down the drive trying to put some distance between us and the bride. Very quickly, (actually, just after Tash had asked Pier if he knew where the church was) both of us realised that this was going to be far from a casual drive - Pier, despite living in the town of his birth, and not a particularly large town at that, has no sense of direction, so his reply of "Well no, ha, but I think it is this way, yes, we'll go down here and see what happens" instantly turned this into a comedy drive.

The bride arrived before us, but had the decency to stay in the car until we managed to make it into the church.

Francesca and Ale (pronounced Ali' and not "Ale", as in the British beer) had chosen the local village church, that had recently reopened (if that is the right word for it) after an extensive renovation. Lorenzo, ever the proud father had worked late into the Friday night to remove bits of graffiti from an outside wall of the church, so everything was just right for the day - cleaning the graffiti off, or even painting it wasn't enough, he rendered the wall, impressive work. This is a picture of him discussing it >>

Tash was ushered down to the front of the vestry, as she had an important part to play in the proceedings, whilst 'Meils and I casually picked a suitable pew. There isn't a tradition of bridesmaids in Italian weddings, the honour is instead bestowed on the witnesses signing the register, today Francesca had asked her three sisters, Laura, Uli and Tash. Pier and I bobbed around during the signing, camera in hand, no doubt trying to make our respective partners look as beautiful as we could (next to the bride, who looked more beautiful, of course).

Without the pressure to be at our next location before the bride, our camera car took a relaxed position again at the back of the procession and followed the newly created Mr and Mrs Vento down some winding country roads. After one particularly extreme 90 degree turn, we appeared outside the most picturesque villa I have ever seen, there are pictures, look.

This time Tash and I got to sit together and our hosts, mindful of the young lady in tow, placed Amelia next to the most desirable young man at the wedding, or so I was told by a visibly jealous Tash.

It was a truly beautiful afternoon in wonderful surroundings and with lots of food, but eventually we had to move on, back to the hotel and on with our party clothes before reappearing at the Bortesi house for an evening shindig.

The three of us choose to position ourselves outside in the garden for the evening, whilst the Italians did their "stone cold sober groovy dancing thing" inside. The girls were entertained by a conversation I was having with Alberto, who seemed to be on a mission, his opening line to me of 'Hey Mark where is the drink, is there any Whisky inside? ' seemed to set the tone, it was then followed by an earnest discussion on the merits of drinking beer from a can that has a hole punched into the side (so you get a beer fountain sprayed directly down your throat, apparently ) 'it gets you really pissed' I was informed, my only (admittedly pitiful) retort was 'but I am a pillar of the community, I can't do this stuff anymore', in fact I have never drunk beer this way and wasn't about to start.

The conversational Gems did not stop there, Alberto was on fire, choosing to educate us on the delights of cheesy popcorn, "you don't think that it will work, that it will be the worst tasting thing ever, as bad as saying "fucking hell in church", but it is not, it is wonderful...." was the most memorable endorsement. For once at a wedding, Tash and I (and Amelia) left early, leaving the party to carry on until the early hours.

Our trip with Amelia finished with a day on Lake Como, just down from George Clooney's villa, we called, but he wasn't in. Bellagio, where we stayed, had the faded glory of a town that must have been the location to be seen in the 50's and 60's, I am sure that it is uncomfortably packed during the Italian holiday season, but whilst we were there our companions were just the English blue rinse set and a few (English) chav wedding parties, I was soo proud.

We eventually partied company with Amelia on the Tuesday morning, she packed off for another 10 days on holiday on the Greek islands and we faced up to the true joy of flying back to London and work.

One piece of good news that we would like to share with you (maybe as a reward for getting through the post) is that her first set of scan results since the trial started show a 30% reduction in tumour size , this you remember from my previous comments falls within the 'good' response box.

Just to illustrate how manic things have been, next week Tash will tell you about her Knitting trip to Denmark.

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