Guardiaregia .. researching my ancestral roots

One of our goals on our trip was to get to the village where our Grandparents are from in Italy. It is a small town about 150 miles east of Rome called Guardiaregia, in the state or province of Abruzzi. Guardiregia is tucked away up in the mountains and is not on most maps, so we felt it would be in our best interests to pay the extra 10 euro and get a GPS system in our rental car. This turned out to be a wise decision as it would've taken us at least 2 hours longer without it. So we made the drive through the Italian countryside in our Fiat, stopping once at a rest stop on the highway for a slice of pizza but we were able to make it there in about 3 hours. 

We had a rough description of what our grandma's house looked like and where it was, so as we drove up the mountain we stopped at one that we thought fit the description, however it turned out to be an abandoned barn as we later found out so we have about 10 pictures a rundown barn with jack and I in front of it, which is nice. 

Anyway, we moved on and got to the town square and parked the car and started walking around. We saw the church where our grandparents got married and a war memorial that had a bunch of Rotundo's on it. So we milled around and took pictures like Japanese tourists for like a half hour. Here's the church where Cosmo and Carolina tied the knot.

So we ditched the car and set out on foot walking through the neighborhood up the hills and getting the lay of the land. 

As we were walking through the neighborhood I noticed this on the side of one of the apartments. The door was open but there were beads in front of the door. I didn't even notice that right behind the curtain of beads was an old gentleman who came out and greeted us. I did my best to put together a sentence in Italian but failed miserabley and his english was no better. But we showed him our driver's license to show that we too were named Rotundo and told him we were from America. He was very happy to talk to us and invited us in for Coffee. We sat and drank espresso with him (Pasquele) and his wife Vittoria and did our best to communicate. The woman, Vittoria thought she knew my grandmother, who knows? But it was an awesome experience to be invited into a strangers home in another country whos language you don't even speak and have coffee with them.

Here is Jack Rotundo, Pasquele Rotundo, Vittoria Rotundo and Ben Rotundo after we sat and drank espresso. This was one of the major highlights of the entire trip through Europe, Jack and I were dumbfounded at how friendly they were and insisted we stay for coffee, they reminded us of our grandparents.

This is Minimarket Giannantonio. My grandma's name is Carolina Giannantonio and this is her families house that was also a little market. It was closed while we were there unfortunately because it was during ciesta.