A visit to Carmignano wine country

Our friends, Dario & Cristina, took us to Carmignano for a private wine tasting yesterday on Wednesday, August 10th. We met up with Carlo & Antonella Vannini and Carlo and Dario were the contractors who did the construction on our well.

It was beautiful Tuscan afternoon for wine in the countryside! Afer the wine tasting, we drove to a small town called Artimino for some gelato! The clock tower in Artimino was damaged during WWII from the Americans trying to free the Italians from german rule. The damage is still evident today... I guess the Italians are in no hurry to fix it!

Next was the feste to celebrate an evening of wine and the stars! The walk up to the top of the hill town was an exercise all in itself, but we felt this was better than waiting for the bus. The walk down was much better, but I can tell you that the views from up there were incredibile!

Mario is back!

This is our 3rd day in Tuscany on the 2011 vacanza and our amico, Mario, dropped by for some branzino last night. He's back today looking for more treats, so we got him on film to show the world! We basically saved this cat's life 4 years ago when we found him along side the road near our home. We'll be blogging for the next 3 weeks in Italy, so check our site for updates as we travel through Italia!

Gran Fondo in Los Angeles/Beverly Hills!

We attended the Gran Fondo bicycle race in Los Amgeles which started in Beverly Hills. This event was held on Sunday, June 26th and had 2 separate races, a 39 mile race and a 72 mile race.

The Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles was one of the sponsors. Saturday night we went to the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica to see 2 Italian movies. Both events celebrated the 150th years of Italian unity.

It was a beautiful weekend in L.A. for the bike races!

A Visit With My Cousins, Dennis, Carol, & Matt, AKA, Kenny!

April 10th saw us getting together with our cousins, Dennis, Carol, and Matt AKA Kenny. Kenny is my late Aunt Marie's son, who I hadn't seen in many years. He changed his name to Matt Ravenhouk and prefers to be called Matt, although he's always been cousin Kenny to me. He has a website, www.rawguts.com and he lives in Oregon.

Dennis is my late Uncle George's oldest son and he and Carol have been married for over 40 years. They recently retired and moved to Northern California. They have a home on a lake and are living the good life "La Dolce Vita"!

It was such a nice afternoon visiting with all of them and I put them on the phone with my father and our Aunt Veronica. Cousin Marla was unavailable to talk on the phone, but we had talked with her recently and she lives in Tampa, Florida. She's the first cousin to show real interest in coming to Italy to visit us in Tuscany, so I hope she comes out for a visit soon!

My Father, David K. Mancini

As we start the process of getting our documents in order to apply for an Italian visa, we needed my father's bith certificate. We found out his actual birth certificate had his name as "Davis" instead of "David", so we had to apply for a name change with the state of Michigan since my birth certificate shows my father as "David". These pictures were taken with him on Christmas day at my sister Susan's home in Encino, Calif.

It was a history lesson to learn that my grandmother, Laura Mancini, had misspelled his name as she wasn't very good with English. This all happened back in 1930, so it just goes to show how the times were back in the day for some Italian immigrants. My grandmother was the sweetest lady and it was great visiting her home town of Sale, in Abruzzo, Italy. She came to the United States in 1900 as a 5 year old girl with her family. My grandfather was from the town of Sulmona, which is also in Abruzzo.