Dispatch From Coach #6

I am moving backwards at 80 miles an hour watching the Italian countryside whiz by. Today El and I are taking our first overnight road trip since coming to Bari- heading to Rome for the long weekend. Easter is a pretty big deal in this country and we got the 7:46am train on this Good Friday. We will get to Rome around noon. This should turn out to be the least tourist-y trip we have made to Rome together in that our plans for the next three days will be focused mostly on the family get togethers. We will stay with cousin Roberta.
El recalled a restaurant that she liked a lot when she would visit Rome with her mom and was able to get us a reservation for tonight at 7:00. Tomorrow we will do the most tourist thing on the itinerary- go to the town of Frascati. Every time I have been to Rome, someone has mentioned going to Frascati. “The next time you come, we should go to Frascati” or “if you haven’t been to Frascati, you have to go”. Honestly, I could never seem to understand what this was all about. Was it a restaurant? A place to go to enjoy a picnic lunch? A town that needs to be explored by just wandering around? Knowing that our major tourist hotspots in Rome have long been crossed off of our to-do list, with an extra day in town, I thought this may be the time to look into that option. After some preliminary research, it looks like Frascati is a picturesque town on the outskirts of Rome with scenic overviews of the city just beyond the rolling hills of the vineyards. It is a wine producing region where you would go to take in the sights and either get lunch or arrange for a more complex winery tour of which there seems to be no shortage of options. I booked us a day at the Minardi Winery which includes a tour of the vineyard and olive grove, a pizza making class (pasta making was also an option), and a lunch of your pizza with Minardi wines. I expect there will be a gift shop.
Tomorrow afternoon we will head with Roberta to the town of Campagnano to visit with some of the extended family. We haven’t seen them in a couple of years and they have all treated me well. They are all genuinely happy to see me, but there is no real expectation of meaningful conversation since my translator will be visiting with them. 
Sunday is Easter festivities with Roberta’s immediate family. Aunt Rina, her brother Sandro’s family, Roberta, her son Emanuele’s family, and us. Then, Monday is a question mark. Most businesses will be closed. It is possible that we will visit more family in the afternoon after hanging at the house for much of the day. We are scheduled for a return to Bari on Tuesday afternoon which will bring the Easter weekend to a close for us- and kick off our preparation for Roberta to come visit us next weekend.