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It’s funny, when I mentioned writing this vacation post to Keen we both immediately went (in our dreams) to Italy. Traveling up the Amalfi Coast, spending time in the south of France, maybe popping into Spain (because if you can afford this type of vacation you can also afford to pop, right? In my becoming wealthy fantasies there is a lot of popping). We’ve talked about going to Italy since before we were married, and since then the south of France’s appeal has grown to about equal proportion. For me and Keen a lot of traveling is about the food. We like to eat. A lot. We try to hit Meditteranean and French restaurants whenever we can, along with Italian and tapas, Greek, Moroccan… you get the picture. We’re both very adventurous, at least with food (I can’t Keen to agree to an Amazon trip or anything like that) and that area of the world has a lot of gastronomical appeal.
This is, of course, a slight hiccup when taking a FAMILY vacation. It’s a bit hard to sell a five-year-old on the wonders of eating abroad when he still occasionally turns up his nose at mac’n’cheese.
Me: “Hey Chance, we gotta go to the coffee shop. Our Internet is down and I have to write about our dream family vacation.”
Chance: “Our dream vacation!?!” (The boy does love vacation. Preferably with hotdogs.)
Me: “Yeah, we want to go Italy and France!”
Chance, long pause. “Italy? I don’t want to go Italy.” (Like he even knows. Maybe I should have said Disneytaly.)
Me: “Buuut…. it has all these beaches for swimming! It’s like Hawaii but everyone speaks another language!”
Chance: “ALL RIGHT! Let’s go to Italy!”
Sold and I haven’t even told him about the volcanoes yet.
So this is the plan (carefully detailed over the years), Keen has always wanted to take one of those cooking classes in Italy, with or without a tour. In the meantime, I will spend time on the beach with Chance, visit some volcanoes, and tour through any nearby archaelogical ruins (that’s the educational portion of the vacation and Chance will just have to deal). I have also wanted to do some extensive shopping but I concede that that doesn’t make for family fun so I can give that up for the next trip (which also involves me and about $50 grand to shop couture in France… I did say I had wealth fantasies.) So we will stroll, we will swim, we will eat very good food. A slow vacation. Not a whirlwind. One with books and lazy days. Maybe I can even rent a vespa. I don’t know how to ride a vespa but I bet that will up the cool factor in the kid’s eyes. It definitely ups the cool factor in my eyes. I could wear a scarf! Chance could pick up rude words in Italian (oh, you know it’s going to happen). Keen can delight in cooking during the day and picking out our restaurants at night. He loves that sort of thing. It would be… dare I say… the rarest of family vacations… relaxing?
Someday. I can’t wait. – wg
Don’t forget to enter the “Do What You Love” Sweepstakes, for a chance to win your own ultimate family vacation. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.