On the 10th October we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. 8 years have gone by in the blink of an eye and it’s been brilliant. We don’t usually celebrate our wedding anniversary as we are at the tail end of the wedding season and that means we’re spending most of our time in our shipping container garden office being editing machines. Last year we changed things up a bit! A secret Venice Wedding Anniversary trip. Yep, I planned it all in secret so it was a total surprise to Kelly.
On the morning of our Wedding Anniversary I announced to Kel that we were off to Venice. Little did she know that it wasn’t for the weekend but I had made a sneaky plan with our friends (H+W). Venice for 3 nights turned into one night and we were also going to skip across the Italian border and in to Slovenia.
Now here is the little twist. Slovenia was never on the holiday/weekend break radar for us. We knew literally nothing about it. Then we started to watch The Chef’s Table on Netflix and Slovenia went from not on the radar to being a must visit. Chef’s Table is a series on Netflix that we fell in love with from the off! Firstly Kel LOVES cooking big time and secondly it’s one of the most beautifully shot things on TV and as wedding photographers you really are tuned into these things. Watching it is Kel’s release, her way of relaxing and switching off. She cooks almost every meal we have from scratch and makes a new recipe weekly. We also watch many cooking programmes and Chef’s Table is a bloody delight to watch. Go watch it and thank us later 😉 I am of course, chief taster and a good one at that. This is probably why our waistbands are stretching by the day!
So the itinerary was one night in beautiful Venice and then 2 nights in Slovenia which included a stay at Hisa Franko in Kobarid the star of one of the episodes on Chef’s Table! We were going to the place that we really fell in love with while winding down on the sofa all those months ago. We had good food, good wine and the two best people to look forward to and we were so excited!
Venice was lovely, we got to see all the touristy stuff before heading across to the Island of Burano where our hotel was. The minute our water taxi pulled up onto the Island the heavens opened and it didn’t relent. Burano looked like a really beautiful place but the weather and time restraints meant we didn’t get the time we would have liked getting to really explore the Island. We did however get to eat the most delicious seafood at a lovely authentic restaurant on the Island called Trattoria Da Romano. We will get back to Venice one day and especially to really explore Burano and it’s colourful streets.
The next morning we water taxi’d back to the airport, picked up a rental car and drove the couple of hours across the border into Slovenia and onto Kobarid. We were booked for a night at Hisa Franko with a 5 dish menu with wine pairing all cooked by Ana Ros and her team with guest Chef Cristina Bowerman and wine pairings being picked by Ana’s husband Valter.
Hisa Franko was a truly amazing experience. Love is poured into the menu, food and the wine and every single person in the house is made to feel relaxed and special. Ana + Valter have a passion like no other and that passion flows through Hisa Franko. It’s not just food and wine it’s a total art.
We will be back to Slovenia too because honestly it is one of our favourite places we have been to. Who knows, we may have Fearne and our mountain bikes with us next time as we hear the Slovenia Mountain bike trails are pretty rad! It also helped that we stayed with two of our dearest friends Heidi + Wayne. We shot their wedding 4 years ago and they can’t shake us off 😉 We also managed to spend this last New Year with these guys and make more wonderful memories.
Here are some of the images that we took on our break. We didn’t take any images of the food instead we sat back and enjoyed the experience. One we will never forget….
