Italy Revisited 2024: Richotti family

I have so much to talk about today I don’t even know where to begin. It was such a fun filled day ! Again can I just say how welcoming our family has been.

A little background about this side of the family. This is my grandmother‘s side of the family, the Richotti family. I met them 15 years ago on my first trip to Italy. I usually communicate with them through Carolina. She is a young woman approximately 40 years old, married to Alberto and they have two beautiful daughters. Before they were married, they visited the United States and met up with my son TJ while he was living in Los Angeles. When I knew I was going to be returning to Italy, I contacted her to set up another family reunion so that Nick, Alexis, Kylie , my sister, and Lial could meet them. Carolina and Alberto are the ones that hosted us today for our lunch. She also has a younger sister named Theresa who is also married and has two children. She is a doctor as is her husband. Her husband could not be there today because he was working.

Her mother Genova, and her father Benedito were also there along with her aunt Adele. I had also met them 15 years ago. They live in a beautiful modern condo, which they bought 2 years ago. Ok enough background.

We were to arrive at 1 PM so we arranged a ride through our VRBO host to take us to our destination since we really didn’t know where we were going. We arrived a little early and Carolina gave me the code to get into the gate and as we were walking up, their condo is located on the third floor and she was hanging over the balcony saying hello to us. She then told us to come up to the third-floor. She and her husband Alberto greeted us at the door and as we entered, we saw two darling little girls playing in the living room. I introduced her to everyone and of course we all had to do the Italian kisses. They seemed very happy to see us.

She already had a beautiful spread of food out on the table with Italian meats and cheeses, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes in olive oil and mushroom spread on little crostinis. There was this amazing Gorgonzola cheese that she had cut in chunks, one of my favorites! That was just the appetizer portion! We had sparkling water to drink, and we were all given a glass of champagne to do a family toast. For the next hour, we just talked and we tried to find out as much information as we could about each other. Carolina and her husband speak very good English. Her sister and her mom and dad can speak a little English. Then the young people decided they were going to play foosball . Kylie and Nick feel like they got set up.

Carolinas sister and Alberto blew them out of the water. As they were playing foosball the older generation sat and talked with each other still gathering information. So much talking, English, Italian and back to English. Believe it or not it is pretty mind-boggling when you’re trying to figure out what everybody is saying and they’re speaking in different languages

They continue to play for a while and then it was time for our next course. I’m apologizing ahead of time about not posting any pictures of the food, but I thought it would be rude to take pictures at someone’s house of the food they made.

Kylie’s new amica (friend).

Our next course was lasagna with red sauce and a vegetarian lasagna. Of course it was all homemade including the noodles. It was so delicious and light. Carolina had said she had a busy week and she was possibly thinking of buying it, but then decided that she should make it since we all traveled such a long distance to see them. We finished off with dessert which I did get a picture of.

We relaxed and chatted a little longer and they decided they wanted to take us somewhere else and then they would take us back to our apartment.

Next stop, Janiculuna Hill. Well we really didn’t want to tell them, but we had already been there with Maura and Alfredo on our first night. We just went with it.

Ok, imagine 10 Italians and 4 small Italian children under the age of 5 getting into 4 cars. Yup, who goes with who and who can understand who. You got it! Off we went back to that beautiful destination.

This time after viewing Rome, we walked down another path where we saw the beautiful Spanish consulate. And a little bit further was a beautiful fountain. Did you know that these beautiful fountains in Rome were built in celebration of completing an aqueduct? We all just had a wonderful time spending more time together.