First trip to Italy

This blog is being written by Ken and LuAnn Cherry.  When we met in 1970, I was told the story of the Cherry name change.  Supposedly the name Cericola, Italian of course, was changed at Ellis Island when Antonio Cericola came to America.  There is no proof of that story but there is documentation of Antonio Cericola and his life in Italy and America.  Our love of history and family has taken us on two recent journeys to Italy.  To be exact our journeys were planned for the town of Orsara di Puglia, the birthplace of Tony Cherry (aka Antonio Cericola).  The story begins with the first trip to Italy in July 2010.

First you must know that we are travelers.  We have been traveling to campgrounds, soccer games, football games or historical reenactments since 1989.   We drive everywhere.  We often put 20,000 miles on our car in one year.  Both our sons played soccer and football.  Jason, our oldest son was a football kicker from 1994-2011.  He played at Butler High School, University of Massachusetts, Slippery Rock University and many professional indoor arena football teams.  Justin also was a football kicker as well as a punter.  He also played for Butler High School and the University of Rhode Island.  Justin led us to Italy.  We always knew we would go someday but Justin had a life change that hastened our trip to Italy.  In 2006, Justin decided his career choice should be a chef.  He attended Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh for a time.  Being a goal driven determined young man, he left culinary school and set out on his own to learn the trade.  After various jobs and experiences, he landed in Brooklin, Maine as the executive chef in July 2008.  In a quest to learn more about butchering, he found an opportunity in Tuscany Italy to study under Dario Cecchini, renown Panzano butcher.  He went to Panzano in June 2010 and studied for 3 months.  Justin convinced us that we should come to Italy and visit him during that time.  It didn’t take much convincing. 

So we booked our flights on British Airways from Newark to Milan.  We decided to fly into a northern city and rent a car to make our way south through Panzano and finally to Orsara.  After a one day visit with Justin, we set our sites on Orsara.  Not finding any accommodations online in Orsara, we opted to rent an apartment in Calitri.  The apartment was actually a historic house in the medieval section of Calitri, a hill town south of Orsara.  You need to understand what a hill town is before you can imagine what Orsara is all about.  Hill towns abound in southern Italy.  They are actually self sufficient communities on the top of very large hills.  People don’t need to leave their town because they are happy with everything that is there.  Most of the towns are very old and were constructed since the year 1000.  Many of the old parts of the town are still surrounded by the stone fortified walls.  To enter the historic part of the town you will often enter through an original stone archway.  These archways are the gates to the city.  Orsara is such a town.

Day 1 in Orsara – Sunday August 1, 2010

We were both extremely excited to make the one hour drive to Orsara di Puglia.  Did this place really exist?  It is so small that it is often hard to find on a map.  Our journey began.  The scenery was breathtaking; mountains, rivers, flat fields of roma tomatoes, grapes, olive trees for as far as you could see, and date palm trees.  As we exited the main highway we saw it – an exit sign for Orsara di Puglia.  We stopped to take a photo, it did exist.  Orsara was not on the flat land but at the top of a hill.  We drove 8 km up the side of the mountain in our rented Fiat making several snake like curves until we reached the top of the mountain.  We found Orsara di Puglia.

Orsara di Puglia (looking down the street from where we entered town)