Allora, Aspetta!

A Bottle in the Arno

"
"We do not remember days... we remember moments."
- Cesare Pavese

Seven years ago, four girls were walking through Florence and had a fabulous idea:

"Let's throw a bottle full of messages into the Arno River." Okay, so maybe it doesn't seem like it's that exciting of an idea if you're not actually walking through Florence's historic streets, seeing the beauty of the Arno underneath the Ponte Vecchio, far away from your boyfriend back home (for three months!), but that's where we were--and that's where this idea, and seven years of friendship--were born.

So we wrote letters to the people that we cared about the most at that time, we sealed them up into a bottle of wine that we had just finished drinking at a restaurant on the edge of the Arno, and we, together, picked an empty bridge and, there, threw the bottle into the river. The funny thing is that now I don't even remember what I wrote--something to my boyfriend at the time--but it doesn't even matter. It isn't the messages that have kept the four of us together, after all.

Yesterday was "Giorno della Bottiglia," or Bottle Day, and every year we four girls celebrate that lasting memory by remembering again. To you girls: Corrie, Cassie, and Erin: Happy Bottle Day! Miss you all! Remember--one of these days we will have to hold a Bottle Day reunion here, in Italy, at that restaurant near the Arno--with a bottle of wine that we don't HAVE to throw in the river :)!

If you're interested in reading in more detail about Bottle Day, read this article that I wrote for The Long Trip Home's Florence Spotlight.

In the meantime, Buon Giorno della Bottiglia!

-Jackie

posted by Corrie @ 8:59:00 AM