Why Italy?
Italy was actually the impetus for this whole European adventure.
My cousin Janice Carapellucci has been passionately pursuing our family roots on the Troisi side for a decade, especially the artist Donato Buongiorno, who was my Italian grandfather Domenic Troisi’s uncle and his family’s sponsor when they came to the United States from Naples in 1907. (She collects his work, as he was a fairly prominent artist at the turn of the last century, and hopes to stage a show of his work in New York City in spring 2019. Her website is donatusbuongiorno.com.)
In addition, my sister Julie Holm and her husband Mark visited Italy about a decade ago and found the hometown where my grandfather was born, Solofra, a picturesque village of goldsmiths and leather tanners located in lush mountains about a half hour east of Salerno.
Janice has been planning a family expedition to Naples and Solofra for years. When my daughter Lexie decided to take a gap year before starting college, I decided the timing of the trip this fall provided a wonderful opportunity for her to learn about her Italian family history.
Then it turned into our travel version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: If we were going to be in Italy for the family reunion, we may as well go to Rome for a couple days first. And since Spain is close by, we might as well visit our exchange student, Laia, and her family, in Barcelona. And while we were in Europe, we should visit our oldest, Aryk, at Keele University in England. And if we were going to be in England, we need to spend time in London and get tickets to Hamilton in the West End. And if we were going to be so close to Germany, we needed to visit my brother Pat and his family outside Hamburg. And since Icelandair, with the cheapest flight to Hamburg, offered a free stop-off in Reykjavik, we had to spend a few days in Iceland. And because Italy is so close to Greece, we added Athens.
So the Italy portion of our trip can be divided into two distinct sections: sightseeing in Rome and ancestry-seeking in Naples and Solofra. You’ve already seen a report from Naples. I realize we are going out of order, but that’s the nature of travel. These blogs need to be posted when they’re written. Thanks for being flexible!
Next … Italy, Part 3: Rome
