Sunday through Tuesday

**Tuesday**
I am in the car, on the way from San Giovanni in Fiore back to Salerno. Breakfast on Sunday was delicious- lots of fruits, breads, jams, eggs, and more. We walked around, looking for shopping, but it was Sunday and almost nothing was open. We just got sweaty from the humidity instead.

We did find a craft and flea market type of thing on the boardwalk, and I found some earrings in a style that I can’t find in the U.S. for one euro. Mom bought some jewelry, too. We grabbed some calzone things and some gelato that we ate outside in the shade, and then got in the car to drive to Castelsilano. Mom kept trying to say the name of the town, but she kept butchering it and trying to say it with an Italian accent. “Castahhhh solahhhno.” J

The drive down took longer than we expected, especially since tomtom, our GPS, didn’t recognize newer roads and kept taking us down backwoods and in circles that caused us to pay the same toll twice- we went through the toll, turned around, and paid it again. Lame. Finally, we got there after about five hours. We checked in at Dino’s, and they tried to give mom and I a room that smelled like death. Really. When a rat dies in your wall and it’s 100 degrees outside- that is the smell. Thankfully, we were the ONLY people in the hotel, so there was no shortage of other rooms that DIDN’T stink.

NANA’S SINGING OUT LOUD IN THE CAR WITH HER EARBUDS IN!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. After we checked in, we booked it over to Castelsilano and wandered through the cemetery looking for Lopez and Mangone people. We only found a few, because the cemetery was actually a new one and the old one had been built over recently. Which sucked, because that’s a lot of lost history. Then, as we tried to find our way out of the maze that is Castelsilano, Nana made Papa stop and she took the picture of two boys playing in the street. We were all getting nervous, because she was taking five hundred years to do it, and we were just waiting for an irate parent to come storming out of the house to yell at her.

We went back to Dino’s and ate in their restaurant. It was very nice and delicious, and actually really cheap compared to what we’ve been eating. We all had a starter plate with fried cheese, fried bacon wrapped around cheese, fried seafood, a pesto mussel, zucchini and cheese (similar to eggplant parmigiana), a sausage, and bruschetta. I traded people my meat things for their veggie/cheese things. Then Nana, Papa, and Mom all had the same entrée, a seafood ravioli dish that was apparently delicious and overflowing with good different kinds of seafood. I had…margherita pizza!!! But it was very delicious, made in their brick oven.

Then we went to bed, and slept in until nine fifteen. Mom exercised and then we went downstairs for breakfast, which was a pastry that we got to pick out from their cold case. I think we all had something that resembled an éclair, but had chocolate filling and white chocolate drizzled over the dark chocolate topping. Some espressos and cappuccinos, too.

Before we came to Italy, Nana had gotten into contact with a man named Rosario Cortese, whose wife was Maria Cortese (maiden name Aquila, I think). We are related to them somehow through greatgrandparents or something. I’m not quite sure, because we are similarly related to pretty much the entire town in a distant way. They used to own pizzerias in the bay area of California, so they both spoke English fluently.

Anyway, when Nana and Papa went down for breakfast on Monday morning, Rosario had already gone into Dino’s looking for the Americanos from California. We were not hard to find. He joined us for coffee, and then we all went to Castelsilano, Nana and Rosario in his car, and Papa, Mom and I in ours. First we went to his house and met Maria. She was very nice and hospitable, offering us cold beverages while we gave her the Murano glass dish set that we’d purchased for her on the Salerno boardwalk. We met their two grandsons, Daniel and Dinluca. They were cute.

And, let me just say, we picked an awesome guy to be our temporary close relative in Castelsilano. His house? Yeah, about six thousand square feet. Marble or hardwood floors from local trees throughout the whole thing. Six bathrooms, a kitchen on each floor, more bedrooms and sitting areas than I can remember. In the very lowest level, the Corteses’ daughter, her husband, and the two kids lived in a house within the house. You could freaking see the OCEAN from their deck. And this is not a coastal town. Rosario’s bankage comes from the pizzerias he used to own, as well as the 4,400 olive trees that he grows on his property, harvests olives from, and turns into extra virgin olive oil in commercial sized vats in his basement. Anyway.

Rosario, Nana, Papa, Mom and I went in Rosario’s car to the town hall, where Nana gave the employees the names and approximate years of birth of the relatives she could remember. Then we went to see a man whose name I cannot remember, but he was related. He owns a butcher shop across town from his house, and while we stopped to chat at his house, the smell of cooking peppers from their kitchen made me almost drool.

From there, we went to Rosario’s aunt-in-law, who is 87 and chair-bound. Her daughter and son-in-law were there as well, and while they also forced drinks on us, Rosario acted as translator between Nana and Angelina (the aunt) so that Nana could ask questions. We are also somehow related to Angelina.

Angelina’s house was on the street where Nana’s family used to live. We took pictures, and while Rosario talked to some of his buddies who also lived on the street, their beautiful little hunting dog trotted down to me and I got to pet him for quite a while. It was entertaining; you could tell that he was wary of me by his stiff tail, but every time I told him “buona” or called him “buona cani” his tail would wag like mad.

THEN we went to see a man named Falbo, who was the internet junkie who made the Castelsilano website. He and his wife made us drinks, too. He promised to try and help Nana look up her peeps when she got information back from the town hall. We left and went back to Rosario’s house to have lunch. The boys’ dad was there, a nice guy named Giovanni who spoke just a little English.

Let me see if I can remember all that Maria had on the table for lunch: homemade meatballs, pasta with homemade sauce, three different kinds of cheese, salad, brick-oven cooked bread, cantaloupe, and homegrown plums and pears.

From there Rosario took Nana, Papa, Mom and I on a tour through his production rooms, then we all piled into his car again along with Daniel (sitting illegally on Papa’s lap- he ducked down to the floor every time a cop car passed) to drive out to his property, where he showed us his piggies (which they slaughter themselves. I assured the pigs in a whisper that I, at least, would not be partaking in their flesh), his fig trees, his mulberry tree, his apricot tree, his little restored houses, and his olive trees.

We drove back into town and dropped off Daniel. We went to the church, where Nana directed my picture-taking of the mosaics and figures in the middle of mass. Then we went to see Maria’s sister, who is the village seamstress. She gave us drinks, and also let Mom and Papa try a drink that was almost fully alcohol. Mom got one tiny sip down before she started coughing and gave the rest back.

After we saw Maria’s sister, we went to see the one remaining part of the original castle built by Prince Roto. It wasn’t much; apartments had been built into the rest of it. It was still neat, though. Then we went to see the village loom person, who still wove the weddings blankets and things for hope chests. It was beautiful work.

We went back to Rosario’s house again. I just wanted to go back to Dino’s but somehow we ended up staying another six and a half hours until 10:30. I played with Daniel, communicating in his VERY limited English and my pathetic Italian supplemented with Spanish. They had a magnadoodle, and Daniel would tell me an animal and I would draw it, eliciting giggles. Then Dinluca climbed up next to me with an atlas and showed me different places in the world and I would tell him, “Yo vi Pisa. Yo vi Venezia.” (I saw Pisa. I saw Venice.)

Dinner was yummy too. The Corteses’ daughter, Rosy, was there, finally done with work for the day. She’s a schoolteacher, and since her subject is English, communicating was easy. We had more salad, more cheese, a meat dish (scrambled eggs for me), a ham dish, bread, bruschetta, olives from their olve orchard, their figs, more cantaloupe, and I’m sure more food that I can’t remember. Then Rosario gave us the tour of the house. Afterwards, we visited for a while. Mom and I got the names of popular music artists in Italy from Rosy, and then we all said our goodbyes, and left.

Bed was good.

Today I had the same pastry for breakfast with a macchiato. We packed up and left after walking around the streets and finding no good shopping.

It took us less time to get back to Salerno, even though we had to drive through the kind of blinding rain that makes people hydroplane and mom hyperventilate. The autostrade is the main highway (I can’t remember if I already told you this) and it’s lined with rest stops called Autogrill. They sell coffee, sandwiches, dried goods, drinks, DVDs, and CDs. They had a CD on sale by one of the artists Rosy gave us, so I bought it and we listened to it on the way back. Her name is Laura Pausini, and her voice is very pretty. My only complaint would be that her songs sound too much alike.

Now we’re back in Salerno, and it’s very muggy and overcast. Not good beach weather. It’s still a very nice room, but for some reason it’s smaller than the first. But it’s still bigger than all the rest! J

Mom’s exercising, and we’ll probably go to dinner soon after she comes back. I’m hungry!!

--Julia