Who, when, where?

Eleven of us are all flying to Italy on June 1st, arriving in Rome on June 2nd. Mom and Dad, Renee, Paige and their three kids, Nicole and Dylan, and Jan and I. Eight adults and three boys, age 14, 12 and 10. Wow!

Nicole, Dylan, Jan and I will be there for two weeks, and Mom and Dad, Renee and Paige and the kids will be there for another week after we leave.

The first stop will be Rome, and we'll be staying until June 6th in this apartment, which is only about two blocks from the Vatican.

By coincidence, it turns out that one of Jan's co-workers is from the Philippines, and attended Assumption College in San Lorenzo. That school was founded by an order of nuns that started in France, and the founder of that order of nuns, Sister Marie Eugénie de Jésus, is being canonized as a saint on June 3rd. Jan's co-worker is going to be in Rome for the canonization, and she's going to be able to get tickets for us too. So we'll actually be able to see the Pope himself perform a canonization in Saint Peter's Basilica.

We'll be in Rome until the 6th, when we depart for Molise to stay in a Bed & Breakfast in Torella del Sannio for one night. The reason we're heading to Molise is that is where the Listorti family came from. Dad's grandfather and grandmother (his father's parents) were born and raised there are came to the USA in 1903 and 1905. Their home town was Castelbottaccio, which is about a 20 kilometer drive from the B&B.

From Molise, we're heading to the Amalfi Coast, and we'll arrive there on June 7th. We're staying in a Bed & Breakfast near Sorrento for three nights.

From the Amalfi Coast, we'll be driving down to Sicily to stay for another four nights in a villa in Rodia, a small town near Messina, not far San Piero Patti, the town where Dad's maternal grandparents came from.

We're all flying back to Rome from Catania on the 14th, but Mom & Dad, Renee & Paige and the kids will be stopping for just about an hour because from there they're heading to Venice for a day. After Venice, they're renting a car and driving to Tuscany where they're going to finish up their final week in Chiusi.

On the night of the 14th, Nicole, Dylan, Jan and I will be staying in a B&B in Ostia, which is near the Rome airport. Then the four of us will be flying back to the States on the 15th.

This is going to be an incredibly fun trip. Of course, with eleven of us, we're renting two cars, one nine passenger van and one five passenger "full size" car.

I'm really curious to see how that nine passenger behemoth is going to navigate some of the narrow Italian streets.

According to the rental car agency, we'll be renting a Fiat Ducato.