“Mio Dio!” (Oh my God!) - these are the words Janet Badia most associates with her first trip to Italy to discover her family’s roots; as she recalls, “they capture both the surprise and delight of an incredible adventure.”

Janet traveled to Italy with her sister Lisa for the first time in 2012. Growing up immersed in the local Italian American community in Bellaire, Ohio, and next door to their grandparents, on that first trip to Italy, the two sisters were determined to connect with any living relatives in the small village of Barisciano, Abruzzo, the hometown of her father’s father and grandparents, even though neither they nor their father had ever met relatives in Italy.