Quattro Cugini in Italia

Mike and I have lived in Italy for three years now, and finally the Pink Hat Ladies (four cousins who get our name from our matching pink hats) came for what used to be our annual girls’ get together. 

The back story is that Ginny, Nancy, Gloria and I grew up together in Cleveland, Ohio.  After high school, we all kind of went our separate ways, as often happens.  At some point, after Mike and I got married (in October 2007), we decided we needed to have a girls’ weekend together and reconnect.  I believe our first weekend was in Saugatuck, Michigan, in 2009,  Because that’s when we all drank too much prosecco and decided we needed to have a reunion in Italy.  I planned that trip to Italy, June 2011.  There were 20 of us from America and, at the dinner where we were all together, there were 47 people!

Anyway, we subsequently managed to have a girls’ weekend in Toronto, Cleveland, Chicago, El Segundo CA, Galveston, a Caribbean cruise, and maybe some others…. Our last trip was to Puerto Rico, just before Covid, which shut everything down.  But then I moved to Italy, and we only saw each other only virtually.  This year was different.

Our apartment is large as far as Italian apartments go, but Mike decided that four women here was too much for one man.  So he planned a trip to America to visit his mother and some of our kids.  Unfortunately, his mother passed away before he left, and the trip to Oklahoma City became a funeral.  It was good for him, though, to see his aunts and process the loss. 

We timed it such that he flew out of Rome the same morning that the ladies flew in.  So I kissed him goodbye and then met everyone when they arrived.  We rode the bus to Pescara, where I had left my car.

I had spent hours mapping out a plan for the next two weeks.  It all didn’t go as planned, but I think it generally went pretty well.  When people visit us, we like to make sure they see the beaches as well as the mountains.  Abruzzo is such a beautiful region, green and lush, rich in history and amazing food.

We spent time at the beach, went to a history of the people of Abruzzo museum, shopped at the open village market in Citta’ Sant’Angelo old town, explored the ruins of Alba Fucens, a Roman city founded in 300BC, stayed overnight in a distributed hotel built from medieval homes and explored the ruins of the medieval Orsini castle.  We had a guided tour of Scanno (thank you, Anna Swan), a charming hill town above a heart-shaped lake, and a tour of a medieval hermitage.  We had a pasta-making class in my friend Naira’s lovely home in Spoltore where we learned to make chitarra and ravioli and traditional Abruzzese egg and cheese balls.  We took a tour of a family-owned winery.  We weren’t able to enter the Piccolomini Castle in Celano, but we did walk around it. We walked around Aielli, admiring the murals and the art, and had a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich at a cozy bar.  We went to Sulmona, where candy-coated almonds are made and reminisced of weddings where our grandparents would throw them at the bride and groom as they were leaving the church. 

We ate very well.  We had lunch at the Taverna 58 in the old section of Pescara, and at the Belvedere Hotel in centro storico Citta’ Sant’Angelo.  We ate lunch in Scanno at the wonderful Gli Archetti restaurant. Our dinner at the hotel in Alba Fucens was excellent, and on our last day there we had some really good pizza at Ristorante Lo Zodiaco in Massa D'Albe.  We had delicious meals at my apartment – I cooked meals of traditional style pasta fagioli, zucchini-corn fritters, and sausage with orecchiette.  I also made sure we had plenty of aperitifs. And wine and prosecco.  We had an amazing meal at Gino’s in Sulmona where we were seated next to some people from New York that we had met in Scanno.

We played games and laughed a lot.  I taught the ladies to play Skippo and Farkel.  They each ordered their own games to share with their families.

We walked along the beach and dipped our toes into the cold water.  We ate gelato.

The weather was good, maybe a bit chilly, but the sun was out and Italy was welcoming.  It was wonderful to share my home and new life with my cousins. Click HERE to see the photos and to virtually experience our time together.

Now, the weather is warming.  Mike and I can open our doors to let in the breeze from the sea winds.  In the evenings, we hear children playing in the park and the voices of our neighbors chatting with each other.  We look forward to spending many more years here.