Quantcast
De Blasio and first family will travel to Italy for summer vacation – Metro US

De Blasio and first family will travel to Italy for summer vacation

de blasio italy Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City’s first family will visit Italy later this month. They will travel to Naples.
Credit: Sergio Siano/AFP/Getty Images

Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City’s first family will travel to Italy later this month for a summer vacation.

The family will leave next Friday, July 18, staying for a little more than a week, returning to the city on Sunday, July 27, according to the mayor’s office. It it the longest mayoral vacation in recent memory.

“Returning to Italy this summer will be a homecoming for our family,” First Lady Chirlane McCray said in a statement. “It will be a moment to humbly express our gratitude to the family members and local residents who supported us and cheered us on over those long months.”

The trip is their first family vacation since a visit to Niagara falls in 2012. They will visit Grassano, Sant’Agata de’ Goti, Rome, Naples, Capri and Venice.

De Blasio’s maternal grandmother, Anna Briganti, emigrated to America from Grassano in the early 1900s and his grandfather was born in Sant’Agata de’ Goti. The family visited Sant’Agata de’ Goti during an Italy trip in 2010, McCray wrote in a blog post.

McCray said the family received support “lots of encouragement” from Italy during the mayoral campaign, including letters and emails of support. Sant’Agata celebrated on election night, streaming de Blasio’s victory from a movie theater.

de blasio italy Mayor Bill de Blasio, depicted here by an Italian craftsman, will visit Italy later this month with his family.
Credit: Carlo Hermann/AFP/Getty Images

But de Blasio’s Italian heritage hasn’t always benefited him. In one of his biggest faux pas early on, the mayor ate pizza with a fork on Staten Island, claiming that was the “typical” way in his “ancestral homeland.”

De Blasio will hold some official events with representatives from the Italian government on the trip. While he is away, First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris will oversee day-to-day running of the city. De Blasio will also hold daily calls with senior officials during the trip and return to New York City if there is an emergency.

Follow Anna Sanders on Twitter @AnnaESanders