About The Pellegrinos

August 3, 2015: 

We are Sue and Luigi Pellegrino. And no, we have no connection to San Pellegrino Water. Alas.

Lou was born in Sicily in 1950. He wants to explore where he's from. 2015 is the year we're going to do this.

Read our blog from the start to learn about the planning of our trip. For us, the planning stages have already been a trip and a half. Once we're back, you can read about how it all turned out.

March 18, 2023

How does an American-Sicilian who left Sicily over 60 years prior celebrate his 70th birthday? Well, he goes back to Italy, spending time in the place where he was born. We were all set. We had already organized how we were going to vote absentee in the 2020 Presidential election. We had someone to watch the house. We were ready.

Just as I was putting the finishing touches on our plans for our October 2020 trip, less than 2 weeks after I had purchased travel insurance and bought our non-refundable tickets, "We're only not going to go if one of us is really sick, right? We're doing this, right?" the world was on lockdown. Covid-19 had been declared a worldwide pandemic. Italy was one of the hotspots. 

I held off canceling anything until July and August. I was far enough out to cancel all the hotels without penalty. One of our flights was canceled so I anticipated a refund from our non-refundable tickets. I had to wait for nearly 2 years for that to happen. I really had to go after that refund. It appeared the only money we were going to lose was the premium for our travel insurance policy.

Should we plan a 2021 trip? It became obvious in pretty short order that that wasn't a good idea. Hotels and airlines had tightened up their cancelation policies to protect themselves, but that meant if we weren't going to be able to take the trip we'd stand to lose a lot of money.

Spring 2022 we still didn't think we'd be anxious or prepared to leave the country by the fall. When October 2022 rolled around and we weren't in Italy, we decided that 2023 would be the year. Our flights are booked, our hotels are booked. Now to fill in the outlines. We will celebrate Luigi's 73rd birthday on the island where he was born.

Stay tuned.