My guide to Italy with kids
This past April, we spent 2 glorious weeks in Italy. We spent our time centered in wandering Tuscany and then headed down to Rome for 4 days. Are you dreaming of or planning a trip? Let me help you! In this post, I will be sharing:
Our full itinerary
My best travel tips
Links to our AirBnBs (like the rooftop apartment with the most INSANE view over the top of Rome).
Slow family travel advice for all of your travels with kiddo’s
First things first, a little introduction to who I am. Hi - and welcome! I'm Eileen and in summer 2021, my family and I uprooted our lives and moved from Greenville, SC to a small city in central France for a year and a half. We have three kids, all girls: 8 year old twins and their five year old little sister.
We love to travel and being so close to so many of our bucket list places is a dream. And let me tell you: traveling Europe with kids takes planning and intentionality - and I'm not just talking about packing lists! This is where the concept of slow family travel comes into play. So what is it, exactly? I like to define it as: traveling with an intention of savoring family time and the beauty of your surroundings, while moving at the unique pace of your own family in order to minimize stress and preserve the joy of the trip.
In practice for us, this looks like slow sunset picnic dinners in a local park while the kids run around, spending the morning at local swimming holes, moving at a restful pace with plenty of time to recover between excursions, and being okay with not "seeing all the things." One of the benefits of this kind of travel is that you really do get to experience what life might be like in a particular region, instead of feeling like a tourist.
Last notes before we get to our itinerary-
To go along with the blog post, I have created a story highlight for our Italy trip on my instagram (@eileenandco_). The story highlight will follow the blog post with more pictures and details for each spot we visited.
A little disclaimer- This is what we did in Spring of 2022. I can’t vouch for the state of these places we visited for when you go, so I recommend doing some up to date research before your trip. I’m not affiliated with Airbnb or any of the these places so while the places we stayed were great when we went, I can’t say whether they will be a good fit for you. Check recent reviews and do your research!
Ok let’s get to it!!
We spent 2 weeks in Italy and the first 5 days we stayed in this amazing villa near Volterra. This part of the trip was all about soaking up the Tuscan views and really just pretending we were locals. We explored the cute city center of Volterra and shopped for local groceries to cook at home, wandered the olive grove the house was set in the middle of, ate outside under the pomegranate trees, and made fires on the fireplace in the middle of a 300 year old room. It was magical.
Volterra is a gorgeous walled city set on the top of the rolling hills, the views really are magnificent. We took a day trip to Cecina to spend a day on the beach, and it was delightful as well.
Volterra Lodging:
Pros
I mean wow look at it.
300 years old so tons of amazing details.
OLIVE GROVE.
5 minutes from Volterra, which is adorable.
Lots of bedrooms and comfy.
Amazing fireplace
pool
sleeps 9!
extremely well equipped kitchen
lots of amazing outdoor space for the kids to run around in
Cons
lots of up down slight height changes, we kept tripping.
We had to be careful with hot water.
Pool isn’t blocked off so might be a safety issue with young ones.
Old so not super modern amenties if that is important to you, didn’t bother us!
After we left pretending like we lived in Tuscany, we headed up to one of our favorite cities, Lucca! It’s an hour and a half drive from Volterra. Lucca is a gem of Tuscany and we have been twice now. It is a fully walled city and you can wander for hours in the old city center, as well as walk or bike the entire city wall! It’s a special place and has great shopping, dining and sightseeing. We spent 2 days there and could have spent 5 more!
Lucca Lodging:
Pros
Located inside the walls of the old city AND the Airbnb is built into the walls of an old Roman ampitheater and overlooking a fun square so 10 out of 10 for location!
Comfy!
Small kitchen but had all we needed.
Host was great.
Restaurant and gelato places steps outside the door was wonderful.
Cons
Only one bedroom has a bed, but it sleeps 6 total with 2 on two sleeper sofas. The Kids said they were comfy.
Kinda dark in part of it, because its in an old ampitheater!
Lucca is close to Florence and on a great train line so we left our car in Lucca and took the train down to Rome. We always use Trainline to buy our train tickets! I was so excited to get to Rome, this was the girls first time in Italy and I couldn’t wait to show them around my favorite city. The weather in April was so great and spring and or fall is definitely my favorite time to visit Italy. It’s not sweltering hot and its busy but not like mid July. I was dying to get to Rome because I was mainly excited about the Airbnb I had found for Rome.
Rome Lodging:
THAT VIEW. The star of this airbnb is for sure the rooftop terrace that looks out over a lot of Rome’s great sites. Who needs to pay for a rooftop bar (like the one you can see in the pic) when you can sit on your own terrace in pjs with takeout and the same wine?
Pros.
THE VIEW
THE LOCATION. It’s right in the center of old Rome right where you want to be.
Check in and check out was easy and good communication
Cons
The spiral staircase isn’t the safest. We were fine but just be aware with kids.
Old bathrooms (the hot water was fine!)
Kitchen isn’t well equipped
We had a great 3 days in Rome. Here’s how we allotted our days with young kids. We arrived late afternoon so we just got takeout and enjoyed the view from our balcony the first night. The second day I had tickets for the Colosseum after lunch so the morning we spent wandering the old city (the Airbnb location is great and close to so much) and we went in the Pantheon (you normally don’t need tickets for the Pantheon, but sometimes you do need free ones so check the website!). We grabbed groceries and then spent the rest of the day in the Colosseum, getting gelato and hanging out in that area.
The next day we explored Trastevere (a famous neighborhood in Rome), more gelato and pasta, and then used our Colosseum tickets to be able to see the Roman Forum (normally you can use your tickets for 24 or 48 hours to get into the Forum).
Next day we spent our morning in Villa Borghese, which is an amazing park in Rome. The kiddos played on a playground and fair rides and we booked a 6 person electric bike to explore the park. We had a charcuterie snack and then went to lunch at (American alert) Hard Rock Cafe and I had REAL FAJITAS for the first time in so long. Hey, don’t judge me. We had been living in France for almost a year at this point and I needed fajitas. They were so good. We shopped and got takeout pasta and pizza for dinner and enjoyed our balcony one more time, because it was time for Florence the next day!
One thing we did was walk to the Airbnb from the train station, but next time I would use this app (itTaxi) to hire a taxi. It was too far with our luggage and our kiddos. We used itTaxi to set up a taxi to pick us up from the train station in Florence and take us to the airbnb and back and it was easy to use.
We took the train to Florence the next day and explored and then crashed in our adorable airbnb downtown Florence.
Florence Lodging
Pros
Hosts were amazing and left special things out for the girls.
amazing location downtown
beds were super comfy
Rainhead shower
Well stocked kitchen
Cons.
honestly none. We loved everything about it
We spent our 1 full day in Florence wandering the main down and Ponte Vecchio and shopping. We got gelato and brunch and ate pasta again of course. It was wonderful. The next day we headed back to our car in Lucca and drove back to France.
A note on slow family travel and travel goals. I think its important to really hone in on your top goals for a trip, especially with young kids! Be realistic about your family and what you can handle and still enjoy and focus on the most important. Our goals this trip were to see the Colosseum and a few other important monuments with our kids, wander as many side streets as possible, and eat our weight in Cacio e pepe. I didn’t have every day planned out to the half hour, and left plenty of time to try gelato whenever we could. I wanted it to be fun for our kids and us so I made sure to add in an amazing park and playground, and built in rest times back at the Airbnb. I picked a central airbnb in rome so it was feasible to head back to rest. Having realistic goals with our young kids made this trip go as stress free as possible (bc you know there always be stress when you are traveling with kids! I try to mitigate what I can). As the wise sage Olaf says « we call this controlling what we can when things feel out of control. » And gelato always helps. Always.
Go forth and travel!