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THAT'S AMORE!Author(s): DIANE DANIEL Date: July 7, 2002 Page: M2 Section: TravelEach time Tom Jaffee put his backpack through the airport X-ray machine on the way to Italy last month, he made sure his girlfriend, Cathy Swift, was distracted. Then, for the first couple of days they were there, he wore the pack on his chest instead of on his back. She didn't seem to notice. Jaffee was protecting something very special: the diamond ring he had kept hidden until he would propose marriage aboard a gondola in Venice. It makes sense that Jaffee, 39, is a romantic. It was he who created 8MinuteDating.com, a computer-aided version of "speed dating." Swift, 29, is an accountant, and they live in Boston's Back Bay. They met before he started his dating service, at a Head of the Charles party in October 2000. They "started talking and never stopped," Swift said. "I'd been wanting to propose for quite a while," Jaffee said. "But I wanted to buy a nice ring and come up with a fun way to propose." Swift said that despite occasional questions from friends, she hadn't suspected a thing. They flew first into Milan (it was her first trip to Italy) and rented a car. They toured the city, then drove to Adano Terme, a resort town known for its mud baths. They were so tired that they didn't get up until noon on the day they were traveling to Venice by train. Suddenly, Jaffee's window of opportunity was getting smaller, he said. "And I was still clutching the backpack." Swift described Venice as "like being on a movie set. You can't believe it's real." They first took a vaporetto, or slow boat, down the Grand Canal and then walked around Saint Mark's Square. "We sat at the Florian, one of the oldest cafes in the world, sipping Italian coffee, with someone playing music," Jaffee said. "I thought the romance of the place was like nowhere else." After they had dinner by the famed Rialto Bridge, Jaffee picked up a bottle of red wine and they went in search of a gondola. As for the ride, "I thought it was my idea," Swift said. "I didn't care if it's the ultimate tourist thing to do in Venice, the only thing I wanted was to go on a gondola ride." A little way into the ride, Jaffee, with his arm around Swift, "turned to her and told her how great she was, and then I proposed." Swift's reaction? "I laughed, and then had some tears and said of course I'd marry him." Only then, Jaffee said, was he able to take the ring out of the backpack, being careful that it didn't go overboard. "Then we rounded the corner into another canal, and one of the local residents was playing the piano," he said. "It was as if they were serenading us." The next morning, without calling family or friends, they headed to Florence. "We kind of enjoyed the fact that we could have this to ourselves for a week," Jaffee said. They saw the famed bridge Ponte Vecchio, Michelangelo's "David," toured the Uffizi Gallery, climbed to the top of Giotto's tower, and had gelato at the famed Vivoli's. "That was one of my favorite things about Italy, the gelato," Swift said. From Florence they drove to Siena, through the Chianti region. "It was so beautiful," Jaffee said. In Siena, "it seemed like every time you turned a corner it was like a little framed view of something to look at," Swift said. The couple, who are tentatively planning a January wedding, spent their last day in Cinque Terre, or "five lands," a string of quaint seaside villages in mountainous southern Liguria. >From the town of Manarola, before driving back to Milan, they strolled along the path called the Via dell'Amore, or "walk of love." Send suggestions to ddaniel@globe.com.
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