Third Time's A Charm

The expression “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” intimates that if you initially fail to reach your goal, you'll need to give it your best effort at least twice more. Hence, the maxim: “third time’s a charm.” And so it is, I will travel to Italy once more in July to find my grandmother’s house in Orero, this time with daughter Gina.

Visiting Italy in 2010, I was but a novice in the ways of getting around. Only one bus a day made the 150-mile roundtrip from Genoa to Orero, so I abandoned that idea. In 2013, Jory and I took a taxi into the hinterlands of Liguria, only to find out we visited the wrong town. Yes, it turns out there’s more than one Orero in Liguria.

In addition to Orero, the Italian Alps northwest of Turin will provide another destination to see the country where my grandfather grew up in the Piedmont region in the town of Chialamberto, Italy. The little village lies in the shadow of Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso (above) deep in the Alps near the mountain border with France.

We’ll also visit the Cinque Terra along the Italian Riviera by boat and, if we have time, take the train to Ventimiglia on the border of France on the Mediterranean. We should have no trouble finding Orero, as brother Richard and his family located our ancestral home last summer on a visit to The Motherland. Eccezionale!