What can you do that's different or Valentine's Day?
Answer
Go to Italy to see where St Valentine is remembered and preserved. A surprise trip to Italy, or an envelope with tickets for a trip later in the year.
Story
St Valentine - preserved in Italy? Yes. The body of St Valentine is preserved and venerated in Italy in the Umbria-Tuscany region (near Florence with its romantic bridges and Roma with its Trevi fountain and romantic cliffside, clifftop Perugia, if you want a few days drive taking in all three).
Romantic Umbria
Where can you stay that's romantic? Umbria, which I visited on a delightful press trip, has a restored castle Hotel Monterone. It has everything you want from a castle, a suit of armour, a remote locations with view over the valley to Perugia, (but a road outside - for quiet and best view pick a valley side room), a fine restaurant, battlements, rustic bedroom furniture, every mod con in the bathroom including a bidet in the room I had.
Or if you prefer all mod cons, a modern hotel with a spa where you can swim outdoors under the stars, whilst being pummelled by sensual underwater jets. This spa has much more, interior spa rooms with massage jets.
If you've got the money and time, book well ahead to secure a room at a hotel I did not visit because it was fully booked, which has a spa with Roman ruins visible under the water. See it on Tripadvisor.
But in this region every mountain top has cobbled streets and little tavernas serving local delicacies, such as truffle, for special occasions. You can opt for a more personal farm stay with a family who grow saffron.
St Francis of Assisi
Do you like animals? At Assissi you can visit the impressive buildings at Sat Francis of Assisi's birthplace and mausoleum. Animal loving St Francis of Assissi popularised the animals in the manger at Christmas in Italy, England and worldwide. Other wonderful hilltop cities have magnificent frescoes about his life.
As a teenager I often heard romantic but often rather gruesome stories about St Valentine. He sent notes to his beloved. He was imprisoned. She was his love. He later died, or rather as every body in history died at some point later, he died early and young. After reading through all the various contradictory or unrelated stories in Wikipedia, I have come to the conclusion that the body of Valentine is real but the stories about him come from an era earlier than his lifetime, or were added later. Never mind. Most people can't tell you the truth about their own family's eye colour, or the colour of the clothes they were yesterday. I am willing to go along with any romantic story about a romantic weekend or week in Italy, including a visit to St Valentine.
So let's look at St Valentine in Italy. Valentino sounds good.
Finally, if you want to get married, you can stay in an antique filled ba and b in a house with murals and a chapel. It's like living in a cathedral annexe. In a row of shops on the small main square, where everybody knows everywhere, I asked to see a hotel. We walked to a shop, knocked for entry through a glass door through the owner's ground kitchen, through a courtyard filled with flowerpots and probably if my memory serves me rightly, a snoozing cat and the odd piece of a statue, up a wrought iron staircase to a reception room with classical busts, through an entry hall with a decorated ceiling, looked into the chapel, and were shown two bedroom which looked like miniature chapels with double beds decorated with quilts and en suite shower rooms in bright colours with modern loos. You get the idea. I may have the details wrong. A combination of rustic and magnificent, small and huge. A jaw-dropping place. Eye-popping. The wow factor. Guarantee you have never seen anything like it.Romantic? For Valentine's, a wedding or renewal of vows in a chapel on the spot (obviously must book the chapel and paperwork for a marriage) honeymoon,
1 Hotel Monterone
2 Two Spa hotels:
3 Small town antique filled b & b with chapel.
4 Farm stay coutryside saffron grower b and b.
Umbria Tourist Board
umbriatourism.it
(Post under construction. More text and pictures later. See my previous posts on Umbria)
Italian Tourist Board
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day
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