But then I read this question: “What if it’s not about what the kids remember but about what YOU remember experiencing with your kids?” The memories YOU will cherish forever. The chance to enjoy captured time with your quickly growing and ever- changing children. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the world through your little one’s eyes. And a chance to lay a foundation of adventure and education that only travel can provide. Making plans When that thought landed firmly upon us in spring of 2021, and with an open summer ahead, we finally said, “Why not!” and booked a month-long trip to Italy and France for all four of us. (A little disclaimer here — because we were waiting for international travel to re-open to Americans after the first wave of COVID, we were forced to book this trip very last-minute, which we were able to do because not many people were traveling at the time. So accommodations that would not typically have been available on such short notice were available for surprisingly decent rates. But normally, as you might imagine, booking trips like these as far in advance as possible is best for availability and cost- efficiency.) Since this was our first time taking our then 3- and 5-year-old boys overseas, we decided to visit some of our favorite places, partly
because they were familiar and we knew the locations would be great for kids and partly because those places have been special to us as a couple and we wanted to share them with our whole family. Typically, when it was just Cody and me, we would zip from city to city spending maybe just a day or two in each place so we could fit in as many sights and experiences as possible. But we knew we’d have to slow down with kids as it takes longer to get around and it’s smart to build in more down time. So we planned for approximately three to five days in each of our main stops with a few quick stops sprinkled in. When we finally narrowed down our top spots, we had settled on spending three weeks in Italy and one in France (mostly because our boys had watched the movie Ratatouille a lot and wanted to see the Eiffel Tower). We flew into Milan and made our way to Varenna on Lake Como for four nights, then to Vernazza, which is one of the villages of Cinque Terre along the Ligurian Coast, for five nights. We made a quick stop in Lucca on our way to spend three nights in Florence. From Florence, we rented a car to drive to our agriturismo (farm stay) outside of Pienza with lunch in Panzano. After three days of enjoying the quiet, bucolic paradise of Tuscany, we made two quick stops in Bologna and Modena before heading to Venice for three nights. From Venice, we flew to France for four days in Paris before our last stop at Mont Saint-Michel along the coast of Normandy.
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A HIKE FROM VERNAZZA TO MONTEROSSO REWARDS WITH STUNNING VIEWS.
METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / JAN-FEB 2022 43
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