Day three.  This was the day we visited our great-grandfather's village.  Again, we wound our way through many switchbacks up to the top of an old mountain.  It was surprising to me how dry the landscape was in this part of the country.  In other areas, I was seeing the same type of vegetation that we have in Florida, including oleander, confederate jasmine, mimosa trees, and lantana.

As with our great-grandmother, we only knew his name and the name of one of his brothers - we didn't know their parents' names.  We did not get as much help from the locals in this village, but there was defiitely some.  The first encounter we made was with a woman named Maria Amoruso, which is kind of amazing because we have had several Marie Amorusos in our family. :)  Apparently Ripabottoni was chock full o'Amorusos that may or may not be related.  Maria Amoruso worked in the municipal office and was able to show us the birth record of our great-grandfather and also gave us some information about the town.  Someone did get in touch with a woman who spoke English and who was going to set up a meeting for us with another Amoruso, but we had to leave before they arrived.  To top it off, it was right when the town was shutting down for the afternoon so we couldn't even tell the people that we were working with previously that we needed to get going.  I felt really bad about that. :-/

This was our last full day with AMUC.  We headed back to Rome and stayed there for the night.

More Europe? Visit Roccasicura, Italy where my great grandmother is from or follow the road from Italy to Slovenia and get some gelato (finally!).

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