Woke up in another day in paradise. The AirBNB we have is just amazing ! Check out the view from our room !.

 

We got breakfast, went for a short run and packed for the day.

 

Here’s the tiny woods road behind the house..we seem to be the only inhabited house on it it.. and it goes forever !

 

We headed towards Bucchianico, the home town of both of Dianes dad’s parents. It’s a centuries old hill town like so many of the other small villages around here. here’s what it looks like from the road below

 

The walk around the town was beautiful ! .. tiny narrow cabled streets. 

 

the view from the town was great as well ! Mountains , vales, vineyards, olives and the Adriatic Sea.

 

Many of the people from this town , like Dianes grandparents, moved to western New York and Pennsylvania . They brought with them customs, language and food. One of the things Dianes’ home town of Binhampton and Endicott is known for is “speedier’ skewers of marinated meat  roasted on simple skewers. They come from this region where they are called ‘Arrosticini’.. We even found a playing card deck with them on it !

 

Today was market day in the town square. that’s were we’d agreed to meet Diane’s Cousin Massimo and his parents. We met Massimo and his wife Guilia in England a few months back.. We realized then that we might be in Italy around the same time, so we coordinated to meet up in Bucchianico. (See near the end of this post)

Around 9 we met op with Massimo and his dad Rocco and Rocco’s cousins Lino and his wife. They are all Dianes distant cousins. We grabbed coffee and pastries and set to work figuring out everyones common lineage.

 

A couple of other cousins came by in response to Rocco’s invitation. They added their memories in as well. 

 

We then took a quick stroll around the market before heading off to Roccos house for lunch

 

 and Diane’s brother Steves excellent scholarship in the books we had from him, On our walk, we came across the town records office. With Massimo’s translation help, we found the birth records of Dianes grandfather including the street address. 

 

Here’s a picture from Steve’s book. Dianes gradndmother is in the center of the picture, just to the right of Dianes great Grandfather Donato with the amazing mustache

 

Here are the records the folks in the office found

 

What a moment !  . We left feeling like we’d found a treasure

 

Then out to Luigi’s can for a ride to Rocco’s .. 

 

You could see the much bigger town of Chieti.. the biggest town in the area.. where Dianes grandmother once lived as a young woman.

 

We left a sandstone in the main gate from the old city in bucchianico

 

One of the stops we made was the place where Diane’s grandmother grew up. You could still see the fields. This is the site of  an amazing story that the family has told through the years. Diane’s Grandfather Constantino  moved to the US in 1909. He married a woman named Teresa Mancini and they had 3 kids: Dianes aunts Marie, Antonia and Armando. Then Teresa died of pnemonia . Donato eventually went back to Italy to find a new wife to help him raise the kids. His first wife’s Teresa’s parents introduced him to Pierrina  Ruano… Dianes grandmother. It turns out the Pierrina’s parents were eager to get her married and out of town. Peirinna had two suitors and they had a duel… and one killed the other.! . he went to jail. Massimo’s father Rocco heard the story when he was a little boy and remembered where the killing happened. It was at the interesection of two old roads.. and he showed us the spot !.. Here it is !

Amazing to see where Pereinna lived and worked and where the terrible duel happened. Though if it hadn’t been for that duel, Diane would not have been born !

We spent some time looking at the land Peirrena’s parents Stefano and Anna Dominica farmed.. THere’s a new house there.. We tried to find the new folks, but they weren’t home.. and they had a spooky looking dog.

 

The sign says" please slow down in this courtyard the children play outside"

From there we went to the street that Pierre was born on.. we didn’t have a street address..it was blank !  but it’s a very short street. We stopped and talked to one house owner.. but we’re pretty sure one of these houses.. or at least the site is where Pierre was born more than 100 years ago

 

From there we went back to Buchiannico to Massimo’s parents Rocco and Angela lived. It where Massimo and his brother and sister grew up. We spent about 3 hours with them eating a delicious meal of homemade pasta fagipoli and vegetables from the garden . Neither Rocco nor Angela speak and English.. but they lived in Germany for 5 years.. so Angela speaks German.. so we were able talk.. which was really helpful !

Massimo’s sister-in-law  (Angelica ?) came by for a bit as did two other of Roccos cousins.

 

There apartment had a great view of Chieti and the Adriatic .. and had a nice breeze in the hot day

 

Lunch was SO delicious.. Angela explained what was in each  in German and I translated for her. .. It was nice to be useful !..Massimo and Luigi did all the translation from Italian. 

 

Then out came the genealogy stuff on both sides. Diane had brother Steves books.. and Massimo had his own stuff. We spent more than an hour crossing between them figuring out who was who.. so fun !

 

Diane has all the notes.. but here’s Roccos great uncle Sebastian and his wife

and Sebastian’s grandson , also Sebastian was here eating with us !

 

Here’s Diane saying hi  to her cousin Lino (the 2nd cousin Leno of the day) 

 

Then out came the grappa !

 

n then the Ruano family picture !

 

From there we took a walk around Bucchianico to settle our lunch. We stopped by the local winery and got an impromptu tour.. including samples !

 

Then more walk through the old city of Villamagna where Rocco and Angela knew absolutely everybody

 

Then back to the house by way of a Gelateria place

 

Then we all said goodbyes 

 

what had been an amazing day !

nite all, nite sam

-me

We met downstairs in the hotel  at 8AM , grabbed breakfast and walked outside to meet *LUIGI* !. Luigi is the driver we hired to help us find our way through rural Italy . We thought pretty hard about how to get around … we looked into planes, trains, buses… then  we decided to rent a car.. but after thinking about it more we decided to hire a driver… and it is looking like that was the best decision  we could have made !

Luigi has been driving folks for 25 years.. (including folks like tom hanks)  he speaks perfect english and is super fun to be with.  We jumped in the van and were soon on our way to Abruzzo … the ancestral homeland of Diane’s dads family.  I cant tell you too much about the drive because like anytime I  get in a car, I fall instantly asleep  🙂

 

 

We stopped for a snack and realized we werent in kansas anymore 

 

about 3 hours later we got to Casacanditella  in Abruzzo.. It’s very near Fara Fallorum Petri where Diane’s grandmother was from.   We’re rented an AirBnb from Valerio and his wife. THe place is called Villa Panarama and it is sooooo beautiful !

The house is a ways down a dirt road/path that is too gnarly for Luigis nice van.. ao we walk there and back when we want to meet him. It’s kinda nice.. no neighbors .. just olives, grapes, figs and us !

Our first stop was the nearest city Guardiagrele . The city was a nice surprise. It’s old city center was atop a hill (like many of the cities we will visit)   .. (I dont think i’ve ever used the word “atop”) 

 

We were wandering around the town when we accidentally ran into our airbnb landlord. He lives down one of the tiny streets in a building tha used to be his grandfathers private hospital. His kitchen is the old operating theater.   His family crest was on this cool old wall on the cathedral.

 

Next stop was Fara Fallorum Petri. The town where both of Diane’s father’s parents were born.   Diane’s grandfather died in the early 1960s.. Her grandmother was a wonderful presense in our lives until 1995.  

It was so cool walkign the same streets they did. .

We were about to leave when we saw luigi walking up the street  with  this guy. Turns out the guy whose name was Franco was from  the regions record office. They hasd started talkign because franco was wearign a Roma Soccor shirt.. Luigis favorite team..    We talked to Franko for a while and he told us (via Luigi’s translation) that there were many folks who had moved back from the US to Fara. He told us there was even a woman from Binghampxon on the street. 

 

 

We had read about the Farchie   an annual festival in January that commemorates a ‘miricale’ when the residents of Fara were able to turn away some attacking French soldiers by lighting trees on fire. Durign the Farchi the residents make bundles of reeds 20 feet tall and packed with fireworks and light them up in the town square ! (Kinda like their own burning man !)   

There were signs of the Farchie spread around town. 

 

We were about to leave town when Franco found us again and tld us to come with him. He introduced us to Maria.. the woman on his street who was born in Bighampton,. raised in Rochester then moved back to Fara. It was so fun talkig to her. She spoke enlgish (of course) with a Western NY accent.. and perfect Fara Italian.   Her last name is Deritis… and  her family was in one of the wonderful genealogy  books we’re carrying  that were written  by DIanes brother Steve !  She’s a very distant relative by marriage to diane. 

 

aria and her kids all live in a huge house.. She just welcoemd a new granddaughter.. !

 

Maria and her family run a small bar around the corner. She invited us in for a drink and snacks and we talked more family !

 

Maria told us about the ancient tunnels found under the town that we’re used as escape routes

we stopped at a small store on the way home to stock up. Always fun to see another country’s stores. Soooo many types of pasta !

 

THen home to Villa panarama for dinenr and our first night in Abruzzo

 

So far so fun !

nite all, nite sam

-me

THe flight over was cramped and I had unpleasant seat mates.. but I quickly fell asleep. We got to IST around 3. We were booked on al ter flight to rome.. but There was a 5PM flight from IST to Rome. We witied in one line to see if we could go standbu on the eralier flight..w e got shittled from oen lien to another.. and they told us to run to the gate. The folks at the gate were super unhelpful and would not event talk to us about standby, even though seats were available.. ugh

THat left us with a 10 PM flight.. getting in at 11:20 to rome. too late for us to meet our driver and get to our airbnb in Abriuzzo.. (double ugh !)…

Istanbul is one of my favorite cites.. but it was too far to go into the city so we made the  best of it by wandering aroudn the vey nice istanbull ariport for what ended up being about 6 hours.  Again we camped in the very. very nice turkish air launge and ate some of the best travel food I’d ever eaten !!!!   then visited stores, galleries and even the very cool archeological musem in the instanbull airport.  

 

It was a small museum/. but it did a great job of using interactives.. like this statue with moving eyes

 

To make matters even worse.. our flight was delayed an extra one and a half hours for maintainance reasons. We finally boarted about 11pm

 

We got to Rome just after 1AM.. and walked to teh hotel that our agency had booked for us. Our dirver knew to pick us up there early the next morning. We’d already lost a day of vacation.. but we were in itlay !

We slept a couple of hours.. and woke up  ON VACATION !

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Our italy trip starts today,.. (or it was supposed to !).. Jen picked up linda, david, diane and me around noon and took us the the airport for our flight to Italy . Our plan was to fly form Burlington to Dulles, then an hour and a half later catch a flight to Rome. 

 

That was the plan at last .. *sigh*.. 

We boarded the plane on time.. then just before taxing we got the news that there was a ground hold on all inbound flights to IAD.. no reason was given.. but the weather there was fine.. so it must have been staffing (grrrrrr) .. `15 min passed, then a half hour, then and hour.. and then we knew we wouldnt make our 5PMish rome connection. As soon as things started slippig I started workign on an alternative connection with united.. but no luck.. with the groudn hold .. so may folks flights were disrupted that all the outbound conenctiosn got messed up too. ALl the flights to rome or anywhere close were already full. United automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day or the day after (!).. no way we were doing that. I managed to grab the last 4 seats on a Turkish air flight to room with a stop over in Istanbul  paying full cost.. that left at 10:45 pm…Eventually I got United to pay for those flights and refunded…  so we hunkered down in the very delicious Turkish air lounge and waited for that much later flight .. 

So.. we got aboard that flight.. none of us sitting together.. none of us with the better seats I’d used points to procure.. but at least we were on our way..

 

 

 

That was the plan at last .. *sigh*.. 

We boarded the plane on time.. then just before taxing we got the news that there was a ground hold on all inbound flights to IAD.. no reason was given.. but the weather there was fine.. so it must have been staffing (grrrrrr) .. `15 min passed, then a half hour, then and hour.. and then we knew we wouldnt make our 5PMish rome connection. As soon as things started slippig I started workign on an alternative connection with united.. but no luck.. with the groudn hold .. so may folks flights were disrupted that all the outbound conenctiosn got messed up too. ALl the flights to rome or anywhere close were already full. United automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day or the day after (!).. no way we were doing that. I managed to grab the last 4 seats on a Turkish air flight to room with a stop over in Istanbul  paying full cost.. that left at 10:45 pm…Eventually I got United to pay for those flights and refunded…  so we hunkered down in the very delicious Turkish air lounge and waited for that much later flight .. 

So.. we got aboard that flight.. none of us sitting together.. none of us with the better seats I’d used points to procure.. but at least we were on our way..

 

That was the plan at last .. *sigh*.. 

We boarded the plane on time.. then just before taxing we got the news that there was a ground hold on all inbound flights to IAD.. no reason was given.. but the weather there was fine.. so it must have been staffing (grrrrrr) .. `15 min passed, then a half hour, then and hour.. and then we knew we wouldnt make our 5PMish rome connection. As soon as things started slippig I started workign on an alternative connection with united.. but no luck.. with the groudn hold .. so may folks flights were disrupted that all the outbound conenctiosn got messed up too. ALl the flights to rome or anywhere close were already full. United automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day or the day after (!).. no way we were doing that. I managed to grab the last 4 seats on a Turkish air flight to room with a stop over in Istanbul  paying full cost.. that left at 10:45 pm…Eventually I got United to pay for those flights and refunded…  so we hunkered down in the very delicious Turkish air lounge and waited for that much later flight .. 

So.. we got aboard that flight.. none of us sitting together.. none of us with the better seats I’d used points to procure.. but at least we were on our way..

Nite all, nite sam

-me