Visting Veneto and my father's relatives.

After a few days of work, we headed to the Veneto region, in Castelfranco Veneto, where my father grew up. He lived here in this house with his grandparents until the age of 11 when his mother (my grandmother) picked him up and, against his will, brought him to Bologna. When he lived here, only the central part of this house (Villa) was livable. The rest his grandfather used as a stable because he was a horse trader. My father has many fond memories here. As I learned from his cousin Anna, he was referred to as the "solitaire" (Il Solitario) because he loved going off on his own and exploring the woods, his world, for hours and hours at a time. Probably 10 years ago, this mansion was restored (it did NOT look like this when he lived here) and it is now a culinary school. In fact, my second cousin Marco Valletta (below) was the culinary Director there for some time.

Here is my father with his cousin Sergio and Sergio's wife Nives. We stayed with them for one night.

Here I am with my father's aunt Laura, my great aunt. My great grandparents had something like 8 daughters and one son. Laura is the youngest at 82!! Marco, her son lives with her and looks after her. Here he invited us to lunch at their house and he cooked up a storm!




And here I am with Marco, my second cousin who is now a pretty famous chef in Italy! He has written a few cookbooks, had a standing column in a newspaper, and is constantly called-on to prepare meals for special occasions throughout Italy. More importantly we are both "in the life" and he was thrilled to learn that we are on the same team. We commemorated the moment with a celebratory hug and a picture.


This is a required stop anytime my father comes back to the region. Here we are in Bassano on the famous bridge of the Alpini (Ponte Degli Alpini). The Alpini were the elite mountain warfare soldiers of the Italian Army. During the war, they carved out hundreds of trails in the alps that are used to today by avid hikers all over the alps! From Bassano we went directly to the Alps to visit our friends, those pictures are coming up.

Me, on the bridge. Outfitted entirely by Rachel i have to say!

My father looking onto the surrounding buildings from the bridge.

The dream team!