Buffalo Girls in Italy: Mussomeli - Home of la famiglia LaPiana!

DAY 9: Saturday Evening, May 26th: We left Montedoro with Angelo and his wife to drive to the next town of Mussomeli to meet JoMarie's cousin Lavinia and her new husband of only a few days! We met at a gelateria for coffee and gelato and soon discovered that with their Sicilian dialect and my limited Italian it was very difficult to communicate. We didn't have Lena with us and we all did our best until suddenly there was laughter and loud voices as two women and a child entered the store. The LaPiana's all excitedly said - Maria! - and a lively, vivacious woman approached our table and immediately knew we were American and spoke to us in perfect English. She was with her best friend and her young son, Marco, and she told us she had lived in NYC for a while and that's where she learned English. She was a God-send as she joined our table and helped translate. It was then that she was able to explain to Lavinia's mother that Jessie was "just an in-law" and we laughed as she dropped her like a hot potato and turned all her attention to JoMarie.

They wanted to show us around town and take us to the castle, so Maria and her group dropped everything and left their groceries in their car and came along as our tour guide/translator. We toured the castle and the newlyweds were so cute and looked perfect in the romantic setting of the ancient castle. They were leaving the next day for their honeymoon in Egypt, which they had postponed by a day so they could meet us!

The castle was amazing and young Marco who spoke a little English was so proud of his town and castle and kept asking "You like?", and we did!!! They told us the story of an attack on the castle and how the father locked his beautiful daughters into a room for safety. The raid ended and no one knew of the daughters being safely locked away and they spent their last days looking from the small window out onto the beautiful countryside and were never rescued. It was a tragic story but they made it sound so beautiful. It was a perfect time to take a "foot picture" of the same grounds that the beautiful daughters walked on hundreds of years earlier.

There was a gift shop in the castle, but it was closed and JoMarie was disappointed because she wanted to buy something for her nephews from the town that their grandparents came from. But, not to worry because the next thing we knew, Maria was on the phone and within just a few minutes someone arrived to open the shop for us! Only in Sicily!

It was time to say goodbye to the family from Mussomeli who were so kind and generous to us, and we wished Lavinia and her husband best wishes as they start their married life together.