(CNN) – Gabriella Vagnoli never forgot that trip to Scotland.
I tried not to think about it and “cut this chapter completely.” I had only met Dan Watling for a few days. He lived in the United States and thought he would never see him again.
But as their long relationship in Italy began to fade, Gabriella thought again of what she felt walking around Loch Ness with Dan in the spring of 2002. She thought of his eyes: “very blue, beautiful, striking.” He remembered how they had sat together on the hilly Old Man of Storr, looking out over the Isle of Skye and telling stories about their lives.
It was mid-2006 when Gabriella finally typed Dan's name into Google. Social media was pretty new back then. I wasn't sure if anything would come up. She had convinced herself that Dan had long since gotten over it. You were no longer 22 years old.
“I thought, 'Oh, I'll see, because he's probably married by now, Americans marry young. Who knows what he's doing,'” Gabriella recalls to CNN Travel.
To her surprise, Dan appeared immediately. Photos of him on a three-month trip through Europe a few years ago.
“He seemed different, more robust, more experienced,” says Gabriella.
He still had the same kind eyes. To Gabriella he looked “more beautiful”.
Gabriella decided to send Dan a message.
“Do you remember me?” he wrote.
A Scottish Adventure
Dan Watling and Gabriella Vagnoli photographed when they met in Scotland in 2002. Photo credit: Bill Watling
Gabriella and Dan first met on the shores of Loch Ness, the large body of water in the northern highlands of Scotland known as the home of the mythical Loch Ness Monster.
At the time, Gabriella was halfway through her studies in Italy and completing a year of study in the UK.
“A group of friends from Italy, Germany and Portugal and I decided to take a trip to Scotland together,” recalls Gabriella.
The group drove to Edinburgh to catch a tour bus that continued north. It was a three day trip with several stops to see the highlights of the Highlands.
Dan was on the same trip. Dan says his brother Bill “forced” him to go on the trip to Scotland. Dan was deeply committed to his work as a software developer in Chicago. I had never traveled much.
“He bought my ticket and helped me get my passport and everything else. So I basically had no choice but to leave,” Dan tells CNN Travel today.
Bill also did the planning. He decided to go backpacking. He made sure they got on the bus.
It was all a little out of 22-year-old Dan's comfort zone, but Dan was excited to be there.
About 15 people took part in the trip, including Gabriella and her group of college friends. As the group boarded the bus, the tour guide suggested the travelers take turns introducing themselves.
Gabriella was one of the first. He told the group that he was from Pisa, Italy. He talked about his love for music.
“I remember being 'shocked' when Gabi showed up,” Dan recalls. “I thought she was very pretty and interesting.”
When Dan stepped forward and nervously introduced himself, Gabriella was shocked too.
“I noticed Dan because of his eyes,” he remembers. He seemed shy and a little embarrassed to speak in front of a group of strangers. Gabriella couldn't stop looking at him.
The first stop on the tour was Loch Ness. The guide and most of the group made their way to the lakeshore, but Gabriella and Dan weren't so quick to join them.
“Instead we stayed back and started talking,” Dan says.
In his nervousness, Dan asked Gabriella what it was like to live in Rome. She assumed he hadn't heard her when she introduced herself and said she shared a house with the famous Leaning Tower.
Then it became more lively. Gabriella and Dan continued to chat as they admired the vastness of Loch Ness and the imposing ruins of Urquhart Castle in the distance.
Connect on Skye
Back on the bus, Gabriella and her friends sat with Dan and his brother Bill. To pass the time, the group started playing Uno. The further the bus went northwest, the narrower the roads became and the landscape outside the window became more and more breathtaking. Finally, the bus crossed the bridge to Skye, the famous Scottish island known for its breathtaking landscapes: spectacular mountains, picturesque gorges and ancient castles.
Gabriella couldn't believe the immensity of the landscape. It seemed a world outside of the urban life she was used to.
“I was impressed and thought it was beautiful,” he says.
But while Dan remembers immediately falling in love with “the rocks and the hills and the waterfalls and the clouds and everything else,” Skye remembers most of all falling in love with Gabriella.
“What I remember most is being with her,” he says.
Skye was a “pivotal moment,” Gabriella agrees.
Their guide took them to the Old Man of Storr, a rock formation that offers incredible views of Skye's misty hills and cliffs with the sea in the background. The group prepared to climb to the summit.
Gabriella and Dan climbed the Old Man of Storr together while on the Isle of Skye. Photo credit: 1111IESPDJ/E+/Getty Images
Dan's brother and Gabriella's friends came forward. But Gabriella and Dan took it in stride, concentrating more on each other than on the view.
“We walked a lot and asked each other a lot of questions,” says Gabriella.
In the end, Gabriella and Dan stopped just before the top of the ridge and sat together on one of the lower boulders, completely immersed in each other.
“As I walked up the Old Man of Storr I really felt the connection,” says Dan.
He barely knew Gabriella, but he felt like he could be himself around her. I had never experienced anything like that before.
Gabriella really liked Dan.
“We talked a lot,” says Gabriella. “He was very sweet.”
But for Gabriella the situation was more complicated. I was with someone in Italy. And while Dan was a romantic, Gabriella was more pragmatic. He didn't think their relationship would last longer than their stay in Scotland.
“We had a very romantic trip. There was a great connection, but it was a short trip,” says Gabriella. “It wouldn’t go anywhere.”
Losing contact
As the tour came to an end and the group returned to Edinburgh, Gabriella and Dan said their goodbyes, not knowing exactly what to expect. They exchanged email addresses.
“I remember emailing him almost as soon as I got home,” Dan says.
Dan and Gabriella “kept in touch for a while,” Gabriella says.
But soon after, she ended the relationship.
“Soon after that I decided it was better not to stay in touch,” he says. “I wanted to concentrate on my life in Italy. I had no desire to move to the United States. I had a different life and I said to myself, 'You know this isn't going anywhere. We'd better not continue with this.' “
For Gabriella, her life in Italy seemed real and her time with Dan in Scotland seemed like a dream. He tried to draw a line and move on. To make it final, he blocked Dan's email address.
When Dan received Gabriella's farewell email, he was “a little heartbroken.”
He also tried to turn the page, but it wasn't easy.
“I always thought about her,” he says.
The trip to Scotland had also opened up Dan's world and given him a bit of wanderlust. The following year, 2003, he returned to Europe and spent three months backpacking through several European cities.
Dan included Gabriella's hometown of Pisa in the itinerary, partly to see the Leaning Tower, but mostly because, against all odds, he hoped to run into the girl he had met in Scotland the previous summer.
As his train pulled into Pisa station, Dan couldn't help but look around hopefully for Gabriella.
“She had told me that she had worked as a waitress at the train station in Pisa,” she says. “But of course it wasn’t there.”
Back in the States, Dan went out with a few other people, but nothing serious ever came of it.
“That connection didn’t exist. It definitely wasn't the same. And not how I felt with her.”
He created a website and added photos from his three-month trip to Europe.
And then, in 2006, Gabriella's surprise email landed in her inbox.
Reconnect
When Dan read Gabriella's email, he just couldn't believe it.
“I always thought about her,” he says. “I always hoped that we could reconnect somehow. When I got the email, of course I was so happy.”
He reacted immediately. Gabriella answered him. They began writing to each other regularly and “talking a lot,” as Gabriella says.
“It's crazy that he hasn't forgotten me because like I said, it was a short trip. But he was thinking about me,” he says.
They tried video calling, a relatively new concept in 2006. It was difficult to get much detail out of the grainy webcam images. But there was something special about hearing each other's voices again.
“We literally talked about everything,” Dan says.
When Gabriella returned to Dan's life, he happened to be planning a trip to the Oktoberfest in Munich.
“When I started planning it, I wasn’t planning on traveling to Italy. But when I got the email from her, I decided, 'Well, I'm definitely going to go to Italy,'” Dan says.
Dan and Gabriella arranged to meet in September 2006 in the Tuscan city of Siena, not far from Pisa.
On the bus to Siena, Gabriella said to herself, “Let's just meet up and I'll show him the city.” Although Gabriella had enjoyed talking to Dan online, she was “still very unsure” about what might happen next.
The moment Gabriella and Dan saw each other again was exciting.
“When I saw her get off the bus, I cried,” Dan says. “I was incredibly happy to see her again.”
“I didn't expect it to be so emotional when I actually saw it, and I didn't expect it to affect me so much,” Gabriella says. “I was impressed by his eyes again. It was romantic. I didn't think it would be so shocking, but it was. There was something between us.”
“A connection,” says Dan.
“Something very, very unique,” agrees Gabriella. “From the moment we saw each other. It is hard to explain.”
Gabriella and Dan say their connection was “shocking.” Photo credit: Gabriella Vagnoli and Dan Watling
Gabriella and Dan spent the day walking around Siena together. They couldn't stop looking at each other and smiling, almost dizzy with emotion.
“I remember walking through Piazza del Campo and how happy I was to be there with her,” says Dan.
When they said goodbye, things were still “undefined,” says Dan. But unlike their split in Scotland, there seemed to be hope for the future.
“I think Siena was the moment for both of us when the wheels started turning to really think about what it would mean to have a real relationship with each other,” says Dan.
For Gabriella, the years of separation, the unexpected reunion and the fact that the connection still existed gave her the confidence to accept her feelings for Dan.
“I think we both needed those years of growth to really find each other,” he says.
Remote
After Dan visited Gabriella in Italy, Gabriella visited Dan in the United States. Here they are in Bryce Canyon. Photo credit: Gabriella Vagnoli and Dan Watling
A few months later, Gabriella planned a trip to the US to visit Dan in Chicago. His intention was to stay for almost a month.
“Three, four weeks, something like that, that was crazy for a guy I didn’t know that well,” Gabriella says.
On Gabriella's first night, Dan invited her to dinner with his brother Bill, his wife and his mother.
“It was a little overwhelming meeting her mother the first night I arrived,” says Gabriella.
But despite the exhaustion of the flight, Gabriella immediately felt welcomed by Dan's family. It was great to see Bill again. It was exciting to be in the United States. And Dan held her hand all night long.
The only problem during the four week trip was Gabriella discovering Dan's cooking skills, or lack thereof.
“I always say I saved him because he was so disadvantaged and ate so badly,” says Gabriella, laughing. “He said, 'I'm taking you to the best breakfast ever.' And he took me to McDonald’s.”
As an Italian food fan, Gabriella was a little horrified. But part of her also found it endearing. And over the course of his journey, he taught Dan how to cook pasta.
The following year, 2007, Gabriella returned to the United States and took time off to stay with Dan for three months. There she completed training as a teacher of Italian as a foreign language.
At this point, Gabriella and Dan were already talking about their future and what it would be like to be together long-term. They didn't want to continue dating at a distance for a long time. They talked about Dan moving to Italy or Gabriella moving to the United States.
Here is the couple at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Pisa is Gabriella's hometown. Photo credit: Gabriella Vagnoli and Dan Watling
“It happened pretty quickly, but at the same time we knew it was serious,” says Gabriella.
With Dan feeling more comfortable in his job and having a home, moving to the United States seemed like the obvious choice for Gabiella.
“He had a more stable life,” says Gabriella.
So she planned a move and got a job teaching Italian at a language school in the Chicago area. And in November 2007, Dan proposed to her. The couple vacationed in the historic town of Galena, Illinois.
“We had a romantic evening in the house where we were staying,” Dan remembers. “I felt it was time and suggested it to her in Italian. And she said yes.”
Dan and Gabriella had a small ceremony in the United States in 2008 and then a large wedding celebration in Italy in 2009, at “a beautiful Renaissance villa in the countryside with wonderful frescoes” called Villa di Corliano in the Tuscan town of San Giuliano.
Gabriella's college friends, who had been there when she met Dan in Scotland, came to celebrate.
“It was a fun reunion,” says Gabriella.
Gabriella and Dan's wedding celebration was filled with tears of joy.
“When I walked in, we were both crying,” Gabriella says. “Dan cried when he saw me. I cried from the moment I walked in. So it was really sweet.”
Despite his efforts to learn, Dan didn't know much Italian. He started calling Gabriella “mi amore,” which, Gabriella told him, was “grammatically incorrect.” But she found it charming.
“I kept it in my wedding ring,” he says. “And then I call him 'sweetie.' So he’s got ‘sweetie’ in his ring.”
Although Dan had difficulty with Italian, he wanted Gabriella to hear the wedding vows in her native language.
So he wrote down what he wanted to say, translated the sentences into Italian and memorized them.
“It was very, very sweet,” says Gabriella.
At the wedding, Gabriella and Dan also shared another piece of good news with their guests: Gabriella was pregnant.
“It was very nice to announce it at the wedding,” says Gabriella.
A big step
Here Gabriella and Dan celebrate their wedding in Italy in 2009. Gabriella says this is the moment Dan recited his vows to her in Italian. Photo credit: Walter Moretti
Newly married, Gabriella and Dan began a new phase together in the United States. They were looking forward to being together and to the upcoming birth of their son.
But for Gabriella, moving abroad was difficult.
“I know a lot of people dream of moving to the United States, but that wasn’t one of my dreams,” he says. “It was pretty hard because Chicago is a super cold place.”
Before moving, Gabriella knew that moving to the other side of the world was a big step. She wanted to be with Dan, but she knew she would miss Italy, her family and her friends.
Before making the decision, Gabriella spoke to her mother, who she said understood her mixed feelings.
His mother was Brazilian and his father was Italian. In the mid-1970s, Gabriella's mother moved from Brazil to Italy to be with him. The couple met a few years earlier when Gabriella's father visited Rio de Janeiro.
“She showed him Rio and he told her he would come back in two years and marry her,” says Gabriella. “Two years later they got married. Of course I don’t know all the details, but as a child it seemed like the most romantic story ever.”
Her parents' love story made Gabriella grow up thinking that “the idea of someone moving away to be with someone” wasn't “totally implausible.” But it also meant that Gabriella learned some of the challenges of leaving one's country behind.
Gabriella's mother warned her to consider the decision carefully.
“He told me I had to think about it because it was a big decision.”
But Gabriella's mother also told her daughter to follow her heart. His father agreed.
“They both saw that Dan was special and very dedicated; you could see the love,” says Gabriella. “They liked it straight away.”
When Gabriella and Dan started their family in the US, they welcomed their first child in 2009 and their second a few years later. They traveled regularly to Italy to visit whenever they could. Gabriella taught her children Italian and introduced them to her Brazilian heritage.
And although it was difficult to adjust to Chicago's cold, Gabriella credits her move to the United States with discovering an unexpected new career.
He had always enjoyed drawing and doodling, but until he lived in the United States, he never considered turning this hobby into a career. He lived in Italy and associated art with “Michelangelo”.
“For better or for worse, there is the weight of Italian history and all the art that preceded it,” says Gabriella.
Calling herself an artist in Italy didn't seem right to her. But in the USA he found a “different mentality”. For Gabriella, American art and design seemed “much more innovative.”
When her children were small, Gabriella returned to illustrating children's books. Now he makes a living from drawing.
The current life
Today, Gabriella and Dan live happily in Seattle, Washington with their two children. Photo credit: Gabriella Vagnoli and Dan Watling
Today, Gabriella and Dan live in Seattle with their two teenage children. They moved to Seattle a few years ago and found that the landscape reminded them a little of Scotland, the place where they first met and fell in love.
“It really attracted us both because there is a similarity: not just the weather, rainy and gray, but also the sea, the rocks and nature,” says Gabriella.
Although Gabriella and Dan have not returned to Scotland together, they would like to do so. This time they want to go to Skye and reach the summit of the Old Man of Storr.
In the meantime, they focus on exploring new places together.
“What we have in common is that we really enjoy traveling, exploring new things and new places,” says Gabriella.
Although they share a love of adventure, Gabriella and Dan insist they are very different in many ways. He defines himself as a programming nerd. She has a passion for art and music. He is a romantic. She is more pragmatic.
But there is “something deeper that we have in common,” as Gabriella says.
“Maybe just our view of what’s important in life,” says Gabriella. “We both think that our family comes first, our children come first and not work.”
They support each other even in difficult times, such as when Gabriella's mother died in 2022.
Today, after 15 years of marriage, Gabriella likes to call her relationship with Dan a “failed vacation fling.”
“Because a holiday adventure should end on vacation,” he says with a laugh. “It’s crazy that he’s the guy I met on that trip in Scotland and we’re married with kids and happy.”
Dan says that if you had told him when he was 22, sitting next to Gabriella in the Old Man of Storr, that he would end up marrying that unknown Italian, he would have believed you without a doubt. He never got over that first meeting.
“I felt that connection immediately,” he says, adding that reconnecting with Gabriella and building a life with her was like “winning the lottery.”
“I am incredibly lucky to have met Gabi in 2002 and incredibly lucky that we met again years later,” says Dan. “I wouldn’t be who I am today without having her by my side.”
“I also feel like we were incredibly lucky,” says Gabriella. “I look at my children and think of all the incredible coincidences that had to happen for them to be here now, and I am amazed.”
“I can't believe how lucky we were, but I also think when you know, you know. I’m glad I followed my heart.”