Page contents

Visiting Tuscany With Small Children Can Be The Most Beautiful Hell On Earth


If you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Details

In planning for my Mom’s 65th birthday, she shared with us her desire to treat us to an all-expenses paid trip to Italy. She and her husband reserved a villa in Tuscany to share with my brother and sister and me and our families, if we would so oblige.

You may also like: Tales Of 20th Century Tuscany

Despite a few hairs standing straight up on the back of my neck, I couldn’t imagine a more generous, wonderful offer. As my Mom proposed the gift, my husband’s knee-bouncing habit seemed to accelerate, as did the severity of his pale complexion.

I just kept nodding and sending him a reassuring smile.

In our therapist’s office I masked my outrage, expressing my “surprise” at Ben’s less-than-excited reaction. He gently enlightened me that Ben’s response proved not only normal, but actually what most men might feel when told they would endure an overseas journey with their preschooler and baby, only to arrive at a secluded destination in Italy full of their in-laws.

You may also like: Tips For Flying With Children

Fast-forward to our journey’s beginning. Great pains have been taken to pack and prepare us, and in this way our trip is quite successful.

We spend the flight keeping little passageways open, and moist and fed, swiftly changing and discarding various refuse, comforting and entertaining. Occasionally I wake from a brief and disturbed slumber to see myself partially, if not completely exposed from nursing Jonah.

Ordinarily this might embarrass me. Little did we know this would be the easy part.

Despite our considerable organisational effort, we never gave much thought to navigating in Italy. Our detailed plan consisted only of a couple [easyazon_link keywords=”Italian/English phrase books” locale=”US” tag=”tbelles-20″]Italian/English phrase books[/easyazon_link] and plans to meet my Mom and Doug (who had arrived earlier) at the airport. We waited for a couple of hours with no sign of them.

We decided to set out on our own, hauling our exhausted children and mountain of belongings through pouring rain to our rental car. Ben went for directions and then we took turns watching the boys and wrestling with the rented car seat. Once situated it took us another 45 minutes of utter confusion just to leave the airport parking lot.

We finally emerged onto A1-Roma with our four-word directions in hand. This is rural Tuscany. It is raining. It is growing dark. We are inexperienced travelers.

We immediately hit a traffic jam, delaying us by another hour. My Dad’s advice echoes in my psyche, “When I’m traveling in Europe the last thing I want to do is drive around unfamiliar country roads in the dark.”

You may also like: Things To Do In Vancouver With Kids

I remind myself that we are now parents and should at least look like we know what is going on. Ben stops a couple of times, pantomiming with locals to find our incredibly remote villa. He returns with “maps” – scraps of paper with illegible sketches- and tales of bridges and other vague landmarks.

Miraculously, we arrive at our Villa, only to find the entire property completely dark. Befuddled does not accurately describe my mental state; perhaps panic finally sets-in.

As we collectively deep-breathe, a grounds-keeper arrives. We fail to communicate with him for half an hour, when at last the caravan that is my family enters the villa gates.

We settle in to the gorgeous, but almost completely function-less Villa. The appliances don’t work, and while we have a huge basket of jam and Nutella, no kitchen towels or rags exist. There is one roll of toilet paper for a house of eight. Spoiled Americans—I know, I know.

My brother and his family settle in immediately, and start effortlessly executing day trips with their 3-year-old and baby. As Israelis, they remain in the same time zone—lucky bastards.

As trained soldiers, nothing much gets to them anyway. Our transition? Not so smooth. We have hours of nightly labyrinth walking (tedious pacing) on the icy cold tile floor of the living room as the boys try to un-jet-lag. By day, we have mind-numbing, marriage-combusting exhaustion as we try to take advantage of our surroundings.

Thankfully other members of the family have studied and planned, so we can at least bumble along. We do a lot of driving – hours and hours of driving – with our 3 year old and baby. At dinner one night my Mom asked Sam what we did that day. He shrugged his little shoulders, shook his head slowly back and forth in disgust, and replied “We drove and we drove and we didn’t do anything.”

You may also like: Travelling To Southeast Mexico With The Grandkids

The scenery was indescribably beautiful. The food, Divine. Gelato, heavenly. Wine, yess’m. Sightseeing, sure. Full disclosure? I barely saw anything, and didn’t get nearly my fill of local food, gelato or wine.

The boys spent most of the week feverish, mosquito-bitten, and sleep-deprived. After one failed attempt at taking the train to Florence, we finally got there for a few hours. The slightly less-agued baby mostly slept in the backpack, while we pushed Sam in the stroller.

The longer we stayed, the more convinced I became he’d contracted the plague. He had spots all over him (turned out to be these extra vicious mosquito bites—and we live in Wisconsin – we know vicious mosquitoes) and he just looked beaten. So we finally found our way to the damn Duomo, caught a glimpse of the Arno, (ok, saw it, carry on!) grabbed the super yummy and memorable lemon gelato and called it a day.

Let’s call it the half-day that caught the last stitch of my quickly unraveling feelings of competency.

You may also like: 4,000 Miles For Gelato

We felt a wee bit relieved to begin the voyage home.

We navigated successfully up until the last moment. We went round and round one damn roundabout after another, and finally ended up in the correct lane to return our rental car. We hauled our massive pile of essentials to the terminal. We watched our comfortable time cushion deflate, as we got hung up at every possible opportunity. Suspicious of our need to bring the luggage cart all the way to security, Ben was ordered to take Jonah’s car seat all the way back to check-in.

They had already boarded our flight. I had both kids and the mountain of travel essentials and they took my husband away. Watching him go, I feared deportation (or importation, rather). Ben ran his little tiny butt off; we got our collective rears in our seats and they closed the door. Not one extra second.

The irony? Ben took hundreds and hundreds of beautiful photos that capture the beauty and family and quality time and even some orts of joy (as opposed to Ode to Joy). We shared wonderful hours watching the children play on the terrazzo at our villa, and we collaborated on some pretty delicious family meals eaten al fresco.

So, as ill-fitting as it seems…thank you again, Mom.

*Editor’s notes: If you have any questions about traveling to Italy with family, be sure to head over to La Piazza and ask Eleonora (for now just ask in the comments of her most recent post.) She would be happy to help! Two articles that may be of interest are Visiting Italy with Children and Overseas with a Toddler: Traveling in Italy. Also be sure to check out Ann’s wonderful humor blog, Ann’s Rants. Thank you, Ann, for being our first guest writer!

 

Pin For Later

13 thoughts on “Visiting Tuscany With Small Children Can Be The Most Beautiful Hell On Earth”

  1. OMG, Ann! I feel for you! It always seems to me that when we travel we are in a daze for part of it…and stressed out for part of it…and I think “this is not what I expected”….but when I get home I think: “What a great adventure we had!”
    Keep traveling! It gets better and better!!!!

  2. Brilliant title. Wonderful post.

    (And thanks for triggering the International Travel PTSD I acquired while taking a 10 month-old through five countries in six days while on tour with the band.)

  3. Pingback: uberVU - social comments
  4. oh, oh! meant to tell you that I waited almost 50 years to climb Masada…and that morning, I had 102 degree fever and had to stay in bed.
    Stuff happens!

  5. And here I can’t even bring myself to take my 6 month old to a hotel room for fear of the wrath he will bring trying to fall asleep in the same room I’m in.

  6. When my sister, brother and I were 5, 2.5, and 9 mos, my parents went on a 3 1/2 week backpacking trip through Ireland and Scotland. I think it’s telling that neither one has left the country since.

  7. I have of yet to brave another country with my children. Chris and I almost got lost forever in Valencia, Spain once and the idea of doing that again with Id, Chaos and The Brains makes me hyperventilate. I think we’ll practice with a trip to see the grandparents in AZ first…

  8. bravery! the last overseas trip I took was when my nine year old was one…. I’m finally ready to do it again and next summer we take all three kids!!

  9. I don’t care how good the gelato is, I would never even consider taking a small child (much less 2!) to europe or anywhere else that doesn’t serve food in a bag.

Leave a Comment