We came to Italy because it is home, in the way a place can be home even when you have never lived there. My husband is part Neapolitan and part Sicilian, which makes our kids Italian too, and the two of us had each been here when we were younger and always knew we would want to come back, this time with them. This was also the beginning of something bigger, the first stop in our international travels through Europe as a family. So we gave it three weeks and worked our way up and down the length of the country, by plane and by train, by bus and by ferry, by water taxi through the canals of Venice, and by a rental car once we reached the south. It was a winding, ambitious trip, and the best parts of it were the ones where we stayed put long enough to stop feeling like visitors and start feeling like locals.
Before You Go, One Backpack Each
The real planning for a trip like this is not paperwork, it is logistics, how to get around and how to book it all, the trains and buses and cars that stitch the whole thing together. ETIAS was not in effect yet when we went, so that was one less thing, though we kept an eye on passport validity. Global Entry would have smoothed the ride home, but the kids did not have it, so we queued up with everyone else. The train apps did the heavy lifting once we were there, Trenitalia and Italo for the big routes, with tickets and schedules right on the phone.
The best parts were the ones where we stayed long enough to stop feeling like visitors.
One thing we learned along the way, if you want an easier time picking up a rental, get an international driver’s license before you go. And I was endlessly grateful my husband can drive a stick, because a manual was all they had left for us in Puglia, and his being able to drive one saved the day.
We also made a rule that everyone packed into one large backpack, which was essential for all the moving around, even if it crushed the kids at times and made us all a little crankier when we were hot and bumping into each other. It was an impressive feat of packing, and the trick that made it work was doing laundry at every other Airbnb and drying everything on a sunshine clothesline like locals, including one strung right outside our window in Cinque Terre.
Here is how we traveled once we landed. We skipped reservations almost everywhere, with one exception, the sights you simply cannot see without them, which in Rome is most of them. For those, and for the places we really wanted to get right, we booked small group or private tours, and they were worth every euro. Viator became our friend for the whole trip. Everywhere else we left room to wander, because the meals we remember best were never planned. We found them down alleyways, following our noses, ducking into the little spots with huge hunks of fresh mozzarella set right in the middle of the plate. Our mornings had a rhythm of their own, a cornetto and a cappuccino taken standing at the bar the way the locals do, the one small ritual we carried into every town. We tend to hunt down the foodie and popular places in every town we land in, and the one we loved most was Osteria da Fortunata in Rome, where the nonnas roll fresh pasta by hand in the window and the cacio e pepe arrives in a little clay bowl, good enough that we chased down its other locations when we could.
Rome, Most of It
We started in Rome, in an apartment tucked near Campo de’ Fiori, close enough to wander everywhere. The place came with a surprise of its own, a full pool tucked down in the basement, about the last thing you expect to find under an apartment in the center of Rome. One day went to the ancient city, the Colosseum and the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, with a tour that took us underground beneath the arena floor. We came away from the Colosseum full of questions, the good kind. Did they really flood the arena to stage mock sea battles? What was life like for the Vestal Virgins who kept their reserved seats down front? And why had so many of the statues lost their heads, and what was the story behind how that came to be? One of the most fascinating stops was the Mamertine Prison down by the Forum, the ancient cell where tradition says Saints Peter and Paul were held, dark and small and heavy with history.
Another day belonged to the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museums, and the Sistine Chapel, with the Pantheon, its great dome open to the sky through a single round oculus, and the Trevi Fountain worked in along the way. We happened to be there during the Catholic Jubilee year, and the pilgrims were everywhere, streaming toward the Vatican on their pilgrimages, which gave the whole city a charged, reverent hum.
Evenings we spent across the river in Trastevere, which is exactly where you want to be when the light goes gold, and by day we whiled away hours in the piazzas, Campo de’ Fiori just outside our door and Piazza Navona a short stroll beyond. We ate like Romans while we could, working through the city’s holy trinity of pasta, cacio e pepe, carbonara, and amatriciana, with crispy supplì on the side and gelato whenever the heat demanded it.
Rome came with a hard lesson in the risk of a big destination trip. Our son was down sick for our days in the city and missed the whole of it, which breaks your heart a little when it is his first time and there is a Colosseum right there. When you take on a trip like this, you cross your fingers for good health, because a few bad days can cost you an entire stop.
Pisa, in Passing
On the way north we broke the trip in Pisa, stashed the bags at the station, sorted out the bus, and walked over to the Piazza dei Miracoli for the Leaning Tower. It was blazing hot that day with almost no shade, so we were a little bit melting by the time we got there, but it was worth it to finally see the thing in person. Our daughter did a run of handstands next to the tower, leaning one way while it leaned the other, and for some silly reason it was just plain fun. A quick stop, and a good one.
Cinque Terre, Living Inside Luca
Then Vernazza, our base in the Cinque Terre, one of five little villages stacked into the cliffs above the sea. I felt like we were staying on the set of the Disney movie Luca, all pastel houses and boats and water. We gave it two days, basing in our village and taking the trains out to the others, then walking the trails back along the coast in the evening. We ate in Vernazza every night and worked our way through its cafes, and we learned the rhythm of the place. There is a moment when the day trains open and the crowds come bustling in, and another when the last one of the evening pulls out, and the whole town changes character around it. We stayed for the quiet version.
We jumped off the docks at the end of the night, and we worked through the local specialties, trofie al pesto, the little hand-rolled Ligurian pasta, warm focaccia, the anchovies Monterosso is known for, and more lemon granita than I can count. The sunsets were incredible.
This is also where the sickness caught up with us. Our son was still struggling, so we had a local doctor make a house call, a kind man who spoke very little English, and then we took a train to track down the medication that finally turned things around. He took it for the rest of the trip and started to perk back up, just in time for my husband to catch it, though it ran through him faster. You hope for good health on a trip like this, and when you do not get it, you improvise.
Venice, No Cars and All Canals
Venice is an absolute treat. We walked out of the train station and straight into the canals, and even though you have seen them in a hundred movies, standing in front of them is something else entirely, dimensional and real and quiet in a way that catches you off guard, because there are no cars. We did a lot of walking, tons and tons of it, and one night we let the kids navigate our way home through the maze. Our son turned out to have a real sense of direction.
We ate our way through the cicchetti bars, those little Venetian bites, the sweet-and-sour sarde in saor and whipped baccalà on crostini with a spritz in hand, and we saved room for tiramisu, which the Veneto claims as its own. We hung around the square while the Venetian orchestras played and the whole place hummed with a kind of excited energy, and we rode water taxis everywhere, arriving at our Airbnb in style in one all to ourselves. We did the gondola ride too, and the gentle rocking put our youngest right to sleep. It is exactly what you picture, and even better in person.
We learned one thing the hard way. St. Mark’s Basilica needs to be booked in advance, and we had not, so by the time we tried, the line and the clock beat us. The Doge’s Palace, though, we wandered for hours, and it was a joy. We did not make it out to Murano and Burano, close as they looked across the water, because the heat had wrung us out by late afternoon. We chased down a few of the famous movie-scene spots, and at the much-raved-about place beside the gondola boatyard, a bird swooped in and made off with our food before we got a bite. And you never know who you will run into in the alleys. We crossed paths with one of my husband’s college fraternity brothers and his wife, there at the very same time, and if I had not spotted her unmistakable red curls we might have walked right past each other. We caught up over pizza that evening, the kind of coincidence that only seems to happen when you are far from home.
Puglia, Down in the Heel
From Venice we made our way down to Bari, picked up a car, and dropped into a different Italy altogether, the sun-baked heel of the boot. We based ourselves in a house with a pool set in the middle of an olive grove, just fifteen minutes from the coast, and it turned out to be exactly the right call. There was still some recovering going on, the tail end of whatever had worked through the kids and my husband, so we gave ourselves a full day at the pool and took several slow mornings before heading out.
Puglia is a scene, and we wanted to see as much of it as we could. We timed into Polignano a Mare by complete accident during the Red Bull cliff diving event. We never caught anyone leaping off the buildings into the sea, but we marveled at the whole setup, the platforms rigged over the water and the town buzzing around it, and we got a table on the cliffs where we could take in the whole scene while we ate.
We worked in a few beach clubs during the days, wandered the cone-roofed trulli of Alberobello, and spent time in the whitewashed hill towns, Ostuni and the coast at Monopoli. We ate well in the south, orecchiette with cime di rapa, burrata so fresh it practically ran off the knife, those big soft hunks of mozzarella we kept finding, and panzerotti from whatever counter we passed. The car let us roam, and roam we did.
Naples and Pompeii, Pizza and a Buried City
Naples was in the plan because we had to get the kids to Pompeii, and because it was a kind of homecoming. My husband is part Neapolitan, so this was his heritage and theirs, and we made our pilgrimage to L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele, the one that has been slinging the same two pizzas since the 1870s and drawing everyone from Naples locals to film crews and curious travelers ever since, so the kids could taste where a piece of them comes from. This is where pizza was born, blistered and floppy and perfect, and we chased it with sfogliatella and babà for good measure. The next morning we boarded the train to Pompeii, and in the afternoon we climbed Vesuvius all the way to the crater on a guided tour. It was hot, as everywhere was hot, but worth it. Pompeii is a marvel. You walk its streets and your mind starts filling in the life that used to move through them, and that is a thing that stays with you.
Capri, Blue Water and Mistaken Identity
Then there is Capri, all luxury and impossibly blue water. We took an island ferry hopper over and headed up to our Airbnb in the center of town. We hit two beach clubs on Capri, one up in Anacapri at Lido del Faro, with its saltwater pool built into the rocks below the lighthouse, and the famous Da Luigi, tucked right under the Faraglioni rocks and reached by boat.
At one of them we felt thoroughly extravagant, and my husband got mistaken for one of the beach club staff by a celebrity who handed him her sunglasses to watch while she slipped into the water. He obliged, of course, while someone on her team apologized profusely for the mix-up. The kids threw themselves off the rocks, we swam out between the great stone peaks rising from the sea, and we soaked up the whole shimmering day.
Another day we rented a boat with someone to captain it and circled the whole island, which really is the way to see Capri. We slid under the arch in the Faraglioni rocks, nosed into the grottoes and sea caves, and kept stopping to swim in water so clear and blue it hardly looked real. It was the kind of slow, sun-drunk day on the water you never want to end.
The part I loved most was the hike to the Blue Grotto from the Anacapri side. We took a bus, maybe two, out to the end of the road, then walked a trail that teaches you about the plants and the land native to the island as you go. It drops you at the Blue Grotto, and because we timed it for opening and there were only two of us, we slipped into the singles line and got right in. The whole thing is an experience, the ducking low to pass through the mouth of the cave, the boatmen singing, the water lit from below like something electric. We went that first day without the kids, who were spent by then, and promised ourselves we would bring them back. We did, the very next morning at opening, right before we left.
We ate the salad that was born here, insalata caprese, along with ravioli capresi and a slice of the flourless chocolate torta caprese, with limoncello for the grown-ups and enormous lemon ices for the kids. The only thing we ran out of time for was the chairlift up Monte Solaro.
Already Planning the Next One
We would do this trip again in a heartbeat. It carried us by boat, land, airplane, bus, railroad, and a rental car through Puglia, and there is a particular joy in that kind of winding, all-in journey, the way you start to feel like a local the moment you get posted up somewhere.
If I planned it again, I would break Italy up by region and give each one more room. I would pair Venice with the hiking in the Dolomites and the famous lakes, Como and Garda and Maggiore, and let that be its own trip. And I would finally make it to Florence and the Tuscan countryside, the stretch of Italy we had to leave off this time. That is the thing about a country like this. You can give it three weeks and still leave with a list, which is really just another way of saying you will be back.
The one piece we could not fit this time was Sicily, the other half of my husband’s roots, which was really just the perfect excuse to come back the following year. We happily kept that promise, and that trip, along with Sardinia and Sicily, has a field note of its own.
