Have you been anywhere because of family research?

I visited Italy, my grandfather's birth village of Vigano, between Milan and Lake Como.
I had taken a postcard he had sent back to my Gran, showing a view of the village in about 1918, he had spent some time in the area with the British army working as a translator.
I visited the record office in the village only to find that their calandar had the same picture on it together with 11 others taken at the same time. (Rather like those books of old photographs of towns and villages that became popular a few years ago.)
What an amazing coincidence!
Sadly the family had left the area and moved to Saronno or Milan so I was unable to trace any living relatives in the few days we spent in the area.
I would love to meet an Italian cousin!

Oxon70 I was born and bred in Dublin! However, I find doing family research from across the water rather difficult! My mother was a Dubliner but neither of her parents were. My father's family were from Clare and Kerry, so my search is countrywide really. I have a list of 'sites' for Irish Research - if you are interested I could send them via a PM. Feel free! and good luck!

I have been to visit the churchyard in Frolesworth in Leicestershire where my clerical ancestors are buried in a big family tomb. They were hereditary rectors of the parish.

Absolutely, so far have been to Otford, nr Sevenoaks Kent where 4 x great grandparents lay buried in local churchyard. Also Minster in Kent to another churchyard. Ilfracombe, North Devon to see a 3 x great grandfather's baker's shop on the high street then on to a small hamlet called Bishops Nympton in Devon where another branch of the family are buried and where I've traced various branches back to via some church records which go back to the time of the Reformation. Some my paternal grandmother's family come from just outside Great Malvern where they had a farm and some property and are also buried. I actually have a photograph of a 4 x great grandmother who was born in 1775. This was taken when she was very old she nearly made 100. I got this from a cousin in Canada, I met up with her when we went there nearly 5 years ago and then a year or two after that they came to stay with us and we spent time together visiting and photographing properties in and around London where our grandparents grew up. Also house in Cheltenham where another 4 x g grandparents lived in the 1820s and visited a church were they had some sort of memorial plaque dedicated to them. I also traced a first cousin of my mother's who she had lost touch with and got them together just before she died. I have pretty much been to a lot of the places where my English side of the family came from. Both my parents were a bit of a mixture so I still want to travel to Ireland, France, Germany, Sicily and Malta where other family members came from, but the information I have for these places is predictably a bit more sketchy.

I located a cousin of my father in South Shields so we visited him and his family and he was able to tell me a lot about my grandmother who I had only seen three times in my life.

My grandfather who was killed in WW1 originally came from Peterhead so we visited there and found lots of graves etc.

Before going to mainland Scotland the family was in the Outer Hebrides :N.Uist and Barra and so we went there and found a distant cousin in Benbecula.

Prior to that my ancestor born in 1760 came from the Aland Islands. He was a ship's carpenter and was shipwrecked off N.Uist and subsequently married a local girl.

We've yet to visit the Aland Isles !!!

I researched my Mum's Aunt and found she had married a Jones from Wales. I gave up hope of finding any more there and then. To my surprise I received an email from her granddaughter who was doing the same as me. Her father, my Mum's cousin was running a B&B in Wales and my parents arranged a weekend there and had a wonderful time reconnecting.

My father always thought his father [an Aussie] had died in WW1. He'd tried to find out but this was in the days before the internet. Before he died he also told me that he had an English half brother but they'd lost contact. When Dad died we managed to track down his half brother's family and we've since met up several times in our gggrandfather's pub in Upwey, Dorset. We also found my father's Australian half brother which wasn't easy as my father's birth certificate was blatantly wrong! Of course Dad didn't know of his existence and it is very sad that they never met. However we went over to Sydney four years ago to meet him and his daughters and the family likeness is uncanny - unlike his English side of the family. It was a very emotional time but we still ring each other, he's now 91 and has all his marbles [the Aussies seem to look after their Veterans]. So from being an only child of only child parents - or so I thought, I've got real cousins and we all get on which is even better

gma - it's an addiction, I find. Wow, thinking of going to New York..

The glassworks was fascinating.It enlarged my ideas of what the job was like enormously. I had no idea also that there were so many glass works there, used to be 23 cones in the area.
Inside was almost scary, a 100foot high, 40foot wide chimney and you're inside it. Black with soot. Working in there was described as being in a cross between an oven and a cave - hot, dirty, sooty - and draughty too.

I was looking for it as we approached, but it is such a landmark that I shrieked when I first saw it as we drove towards it!
...Alarmed my sister...

Afterwards we went to the Glass Museum up the road. Masses of all kinds of glass objects. Glass is beautiful stuff.

Oh yes, at the cone we met the resident glass artist, and she mentioned her mum doing family history, and then Sunderland - so I asked her if the name Bell had come up in her research, and it had. We exchanged emails and I'm now hoping that something about my gggrandfather's third wife might come out of this - we have no idea how they met. He married again in 1883 and she was 19 - he was 71....and there were two more children!

Re Dublin - has anyone been researching there? Tell us?

Hub and I went to Lancaster a couple of years ago, to the Kings Own Reg. Museum, following up his grandfathers military history. The curator was extremely helpful and we discovered lots of previously unknown history regarding grandfather. We discovered that he had a son in the same regiment of whom we had very little info. We still have lots more to do, who knows where it will lead us. Our next trip will possibly be to Liverpool to try to discover more about my grandfather and grandmother who made the journey to New York in 1910-looking for a better life or maybe to the Ellis Island Museum in USA where all immigration records are held. I have looked at them on line, but would love to know more. A time consuming and fascinating hobby.