Today was a little quieter.. still packed with good stuff.  Started with a quick run at the house. Marveling at the stuff in this well decorated house.

 

Luigi picked us up at 8:45 for our 9 AM meeting with Franco at the Guardiagrele town offices. Franco is the guy that Luigi met by accident the other day at Fara Fallorum Petri just because he had the right soccor jersey on. Franco works in the town records office and was just the guy to help us find out a few more secretes of dianes past. Guardiagrele is a nice place to walk around

 

We found the town offices without too much trouble.. THere was a plaque remembering the Jews deported from here multiple times. Hard to see….

. 

 

With Luigi’s help in translation, we went right to work with Franco. Diane was trying to find the history of two of her grandfathers relatives.. his sister who moved ot the us then back to ityal, then an adopted sister. We didnt find direct info on either, biut found lots of info on dianes granfather. Most of it was already in Steves books.. but it was very cool to find it directly. The main thing we found about the adopted daughter was that COnstantinos mother probably took in the adopted sister.. probably a foundling.. left at a local church ..  when her own infant baby was still born. It’s hard  reading  about all this birth death marriage , loves, loss, loves without feeling for every one of the peopl ewho are a box on one of these charts or a page in ann ancient records ledger. 

 

Info on dianes grandfother constantino mariano (here writtien as “mariani” !) and his parents was easy to find..  We found his birthrecords with a street address, but no street number

 

Franco pointed out some of the othe t towns.. Chieti, Villamagna, Farra Falorum Petri and Buchiannico..  all of which we have or will visit.

 

 

We found records of the ship passages that Constantine had taken which was also in Steve’s books.. We were  amazed at all of the info that Steve could find from his living room in Kansas. and even more amazed at the research quality and organization he did.. ! We could tell that Franco was impressed too !

Here’s where we were trying to figure out the adoption of Constantinos sister. Franco found records showing the stillbirth  of Anna Dominco’s baby..and a few unamed baby girl that were close enough in age to be the foundling sister (never used the word “foundling” before) 

 

We got a little overwhelmed and will need Steves help figuring all this out I  We said goodbye and thanks to Franco and headed out to the streets of Guardigrele. 

 

We stopped into a store which sold cool cooking gadgets including coockers for ‘arosocini” (aka “speedies” famous in Endicott) 

From there we headed to Chieti.. Diane grandmother Piereinna worked there as a young woman.. Chieti was the biggest town in the region.. and a whole lot less charming. Still it was fun walking where Pierrene lived and worked . 

Our main stop there was the Archiological museum.. Super interesting !

This guy is famous ! It  very old and very complete

 

This bronze was one of the most famous for its age,  detail and condition

 

We headed out into the student section of town.. 

 

We met Luigi and headed to the adriatic coast at Francovilla al Mar. Luigi helped us find a beautiful restaurant on the beach.. the restaurant… and the beach were deserted.. just past season

Evidently swimming is almost forbidden.. but ‘heliotherapy’ is A-OK !

This sign writes its own caption: ” I predict you will later think this was a bad idea !”

 

Took this for our friend Gizzo

 

We then drove about 20 miles down the coast past Ortona to grab a bike and hiking path. There was a motorcycle race? festival ?  something.. going on down there which was fun.. we took a walk down the beach path through some really cool tunnels.. This must have been a rail line at some point. It was great to be by the sea

THen a final stop for gelato.. They had a flavor called (i)NVIDIA.. how weird was that ? 

 

And that was our day… very satisfying !

Tonight is Erev Rosh Hashanah ,. The Jewish New Year begins at sunset,. People typically celibrate by eating apples and honey to bring on a sweet new year.. we toasted the new year with  delicious local  fuirt.

לשנה טובה תכתב ותחתם   Ya’ll !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me