On a Family Trip Before College, Discovering Just the Right Time to Finally Do Europe
By the time my kids, Mila and Joe, were tweens, they’d become pretty savvy travelers. We had traveled as a family all over Mexico and Central America, to French Polynesia, and around Southeast Asia—Joe had even tagged along with me on a work trip to Egypt. But a family trip to Europe? Nope. I had been urged by a few well-traveled friends to save Europe for a time when my children would really appreciate it, when they could enthusiastically spend not just hours but consecutive days wandering museums and historical sites, when their palettes could handle sophisticated flavors, and when 10 p.m. dinners wouldn’t destroy the following day. I’m not sure why I chose to listen to this parenting advice while cavalierly ignoring all sorts of other cautionary tales and whispered warnings, especially since my kids ate everything, had been visiting museums since their toddler days, and frequently stayed up to 1 a.m. But I did, and year after year, kept punting on a family trip to Italy or Greece, countries I knew and loved and couldn’t wait to share with my kids when the time was right.
Except–and of course–the time is never right and if you wait too long, the time runs out. My wake up call came when my daughter, then 16, was studying for final exams at the end of her junior year of high school. She announced that they were the last high school exams that would really matter and that next year at this time she’d know where she’d be going to university and she guessed she would be traveling somewhere fabulous with a group of friends before packing up and moving away for college. Total gut punch. I had one summer left of guaranteed family togetherness and I knew it had to be Europe.
We decided on Italy. We only had about a week to play with and we knew we wanted to see a few places and have a few different types of experiences. The plan became: start in Naples, hit the Amalfi Coast, close it out with Rome. To be honest, it was excruciating to land the itinerary; to knowingly forgo all the other amazing Italian cities and regions, and I did have a few middle-of-the-night “What about Florence instead of Naples?” and “Is Sicily for 24 hours insane?” I had to keep reminding myself that this was a “taste of” type of trip and that my kids would, if they were lucky, revisit Italy on their own. Also, with limited days on the ground, I knew that it was crucial to keep the travel time between our three stops to two or three hours max or we’d lose entire days to schlepping. Venice could wait.
Hiking Ischia and Procida isle, Napoli. Campania Region, Italy
Whether traveling with kids who are six or sixteen, there is always that delicate dance between under and over planning and I have learned to keep the first day of a trip pretty loose (I made the mistake of booking tours of three temple complexes on day one in Siem Reap). For our first day, in Naples, we let the kids sleep in and then had breakfast on the outdoor terrace of our hotel, the Eurostar Excelsior, an early 20th century grande dame that we chose for its location overlooking the bay and its slightly faded throwback elegance. We let the day unwind with no goals other than to wander around the incredibly vibrant center of town, stop in at a few historic churches, and eat as much pizza as we could (another lesson I’ve learned over years of traveling with kids is that full sit down, coursed lunches are often day killers–it’s hard to rally the kids post meal, equally so the adults, especially when wine is involved). We ended our day at the lovely and remarkably uncrowded Archaeological Museum and made it back to the hotel in time for aperitivo.
The next day, at the suggestion of my Italy-expert colleague, we took a 40-minute ferry ride to Procida, a little island in the Campanian Archipelago (same chain as the bigger and better known Capri and Ischia) with brightly painted houses and lovely beaches. We spent the day hiking around it–Procida’s steep, narrow streets make getting around by foot the only practical way to explore. We parked it for a few hours at a beach club and swam with mostly Italian tourists and then found a casual sea-facing spot for lunch and ate our weight in fritto misto. We made it back to Naples for a final dinner. The next morning, we dusted off the rental car we’d picked up upon landing in Rome and began heading south.
We stopped at the archaeological site of Pompeii en route to our next destination, the town of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. There are often guides that you can book day-of at many of Italy’s sites and museums, but I highly recommend prearranging a tour and making sure that the guide knows the ages of the kids in your group. I had called ahead and booked a half-day tour. When guides are great, they can totally elevate an experience; when they aren’t, a full day can be excruciating, especially with kids. I’ve found that my kids, even at their then relatively mature ages of 16 and 13, have three, maybe four, hours of active listening in them before they start entertaining each other, i.e., bickering. Our Pompeii guide was fantastic and we spent a great morning walking around the ruins and visiting the Antiquarium, the recently reopened onsite museum that had been closed for over three decades.
If you drive the mostly inland road it only takes about an hour to get from Pompeii to the town of Ravello, but we opted for the longer, two-hour route that hugs the Tyrannian Sea and winds its way through the magical cliffside towns of Positano and Amalfi. These villages are touristy but worth seeing even quickly. Ravello, by contrast, felt marvelously quiet. We stayed at Belmond’s spot-on Caruso hotel and spent the next two days relaxing. We swam in the cliffside pool, we took a boat ride to the hotel’s beach club and snorkeled until sunset, all the while pinching ourselves over how exquisite every last detail at the hotel was–from the perfectly executed design throughout to the just-strong-enough Negronis in hotel bar to the stunning gardens. The town of Ravello was small and charming, and just right for setting kids loose for an after dinner gelato and some adult-free roaming.
As painful as it was to leave behind the Amalfi Coast and the dolce far niente lifestyle that we had all slipped a little too easily into, we were pumped for Rome. We only had two full days, which is a ridiculously short amount of time in the city, and again I had to resist the temptation to over schedule our time. We stayed at the smart Art Deco-inflected Vilón Roma hotel in the Campo Marzio neighborhood. It was a great home base and within easy walking distance to many of the sites and restaurants on our must-see list. I ended up only booking one guide–I figured St. Peter’s Basilica was too crowded and too busy and had too much complicated history for us to tackle on our own. Over the next two days we visited a few of the other biggies including the Forum, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, and the Galleria Borghese. We did more casual walk-bys past the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, and the Spanish Steps. One afternoon the kids took off on their own for a few hours and went thrifting and, judging by the cloud that followed them, tried on every last scent at Santa Maria Novella, while my husband and I visited a handful of historic churches and ducked into Chez Dédé for a round of speed shopping.
We barely scratched the surface of Rome’s many, many museums, parks, and palaces, to say nothing of its countless amazing restaurants, and we admittedly did a sort of Rome 101, but it was just perfect. The whole trip was. In a week we visited some of the world’s most renowned historical sites and museums, we took in vibrant cities and charming towns, we lived the Slim Aarons seaside dream for a few days, and every night we ate fantastic dinners at 10 p.m. and woke up the next morning ready to rally. We had finally done Europe—and done it right.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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