"So what part of America are you from? Cleveland? I know it well! I have a good friend with a restaurant there, Aldo's - do you know it?" Yes, we knew it.  And so an ocean away from Cleveland, in the small Italian mountain village of Castel di Sangro, my family and I ended up eating at an Italian bistro owned by someone whose good friend owns a restaurant a few miles from my house.

It's a small world indeed. The world felt much smaller, or perhaps more connected, on my spring visit to Italy.  Instead of the grand tour, we spent much of our time in the Abruzzo region, the mountainous central Italian area east of Rome to the Adriatic Sea.