Venice & Tuscany

Our first real family trip this year came at an opportune time since YL's exams baggage have been lifted. It was an ambitious itinerary especially since we are travelling with Miss Tantrum. In one week, we "covered" Milan, Venice, Florence, Lucca and Pisa, in the loosest sense of the word.

Sophie insisted on helping us with our backpacks

Milan is supposed to be Italy’s most stylish city, but if you know us, you will know that we do not appreciate fashion. Actually I do appreciate fashion, I just cannot tolerate the etiquette and decorum that it demands. YL does not appreciate fashion. End of story.

We only made the stop in Milan because Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece – made ever more famous because of a certain Mr Brown – is inside the refectory of Milan’s Santa Maria della Grazie church. They only allow 20 people at one time inside the room in order to control the humidity, and the ‘tour’ is only 15 minutes long. (Note: if you intend to go, book at least 2 months in advance) Actually it isn’t much of a tour, because there are only 2 paintings in what used to be the dining room during da Vinci’s time, and nobody ever looks at the other one. After all the hassle, we were ushered into a room, and suddenly there it was, in my face. It is actually a rather pleasant painting because of its pastel shades – a result of a recent restoration – and it felt like I was meeting an old friend because I had seen it so many times in the media and books over the last couple of years. If you walk to the other end of the room and look back at the painting, you do sense the 3 dimensional effect that da Vinci was going for.

Waiting for our turn to feast on Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper

Venice is one big theme park and one large shopping complex, according to YL. I concur. You can find a glass shop, a mask shop, a souvenier shop or most likely, a number of variations of all three, on every street. The place is also positively crawling with holidaymakers; there were more tourists than locals. Then there is this whole concept of traveling around on boats that evokes the experience of spending a day at a big-scale watery Genting Highlands or Disneyland. Venice have been reproduced in so many places that now the real thing feels like a parody of itself.

Part of the Grand Canal near the Rialto bridge

Chairs put out on the Piazza San Marco

Piazza San Marco lit up at night

Trying to feed the birds in front of the Basilica San Marco in Piazza San Marco. You must applaude me for putting up such an embarrassing photo...actually there are much worse ones... Not at all romantic and elegant like it should be:

Shopping with Mamma in Venice

Waiting for the public transport, i.e. boats or vaporetti, in one of those little floating platforms is a novelty. It’s like taking the Tube, but on water. The boats are surprisingly spacious especially the front deck, so we could push the stroller comfortably onto it, although we’ve been squashed quite a bit on them during the peak hours as well. Speaking of traveling with the stroller, it was much easier than I had anticipated, despite the numerous claustrophobic lanes, tiny arched step bridges, and the general watery access. It is a inspiring sight to watch to the local mommies pushing/lifting the strollers – many of them much bulkier than ours – up and down the steps without help. Do not be fooled, though, Venice is not easy to navigate with a stroller, but it is certainly not prohibitively so.

Venice was flooded on 2 days out the 3 we were there. You can see the waters rising in the background.

Across the Grand Canal from Piazza San Marco (where the tall clock tower is in the background). The Piazza was the traditional entry point to Venice during her heyday as a merchant city and trading port.

Food in Venice was generally overpriced and poor. Or maybe we just sucked at choosing the restaurants. The best meal YL had was on Burano island (Venice is made up of 116 islands) which came up to a reasonable EUR40 for 3 large dishes. I think the best meal I had in Venice was the fried rice that YL had cooked and brought from London and cup noodles back in the comfort of our hotel room on our first night in town. Burano island, simultaneously famed for its lace and colourful houses

Speaking of Burano, we recommend a visit if you are in Venice. You can feel the change in the atmosphere almost as soon as you set down on the island after a good 45 minutes' journey. A relaxed peace permeated the island, and lured you to slow down and hanker for the gold old simpler days of your childhood, of lush green grass and lazy dogs napping in the afternoon. It was as pretty as I had imagined, with all the cheerful colourful houses (the story goes that the houses are painted different colours so that fishermen returning home can spot their house from afar) seated along the canals and boats parked all the way down the canals.

Our most memorable experience in Venice had to be the gondola ride at night. It is cliché and it is pricey, but if you are in Venice, you must be stupid if you do not go on one of these. Each boat only takes six, and only two seats are attached. We got the prime seats because we were carrying a baby, who had the courtesy to fall asleep just before her parents got onto the boat so they had a good 45 minutes of peace to enjoy the chilly autumn night air and dark starry skies of Venice, and lulled into romantic daydreams. The soft singing and music of the gondolier in the boat behind us floated in the air, and accompanied us as we glided along along the Grand Canal and the smaller back canals.

Gondolas with the Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore in the background

Gondola moored along a small back canal

Florence is a mecca for art lovers. But we are not art lovers. We tried, attempting to appreciate the National Gallery in London, but who are we kidding? So we spent a grand total 2 hours in the city wandering around and checking out the replica of Michelangelo’s David located in the Piazza della Signoria that is free and accessible to all and sundry. The real thing is nestled happily behind ticket barriers at the Academia. We skipped the Uffizi (shock! horror!) – only the most influential and important (Rennaissance) art museum in the world.

Don't look! Uncle David is shame shame...

Hmm...so how do we get to the Ponte Vecchio, Sophie? Outside Florence's Duomo

A statue in the Piazza Michelangelo. Yes, I forgot the name of the statue...you would too, since there are a thousand and one statues in Florence...

A kiss on the Ponte Vecchio, Florence's oldest bridge that survived the World War bombings

My favourite bit of the entire trip was the daytrip that we made from Florence to Fiesole, a hilltop Tuscan town just about an hour outside of Florence. We joined a group that hiked up the hills (300m, about 2 hours up), stopping along the way to smell the fresh herbs, taste the wild fruits, and check out the place where Leonardo da Vinci tested his flying machine. The typical Tuscan landscape that I was expecting unfolded in front of us – yellow sun-washed, rolling vineyards and olive groves set amongst old Italian farmhouses. We ended up at a Renaissance villa to have a Tuscan lunch accompanied by wine and entertaining food anecdotes dished out by our guide. I carried Sophie up and down the hill on our trusty Ergo baby carrier (it’s been a while!) and surprisingly both of us did quite well – she was cooperative, playing with her tree sticks and singing her little ditties; I was not tired, even though she is now 11-12kg. All in all, the perfect Tuscan day!

Rewarding ourselves with a hearty Tuscan meal and some Chianti wines after the 2-3 hour hike uphill in Fiesole, just outside of Florence

To continue our Tuscan experience, we left Florence to stay in an old farmhouse-converted apartment up in the hills in the village of Tramonte in northern Tuscany, 15 minutes away from the town of Lucca. It was set amongst olive groves and had a spectacular vista just 30 minutes walk uphill from the apartment. Although the apartment was not as cosy as we’d like, it did give us the opportunity to have a Tuscan cooking class in the comfort of our own place for me. You are permitted to be shocked. Yes, I am not a cook. I am still not a cook. But the cook in the family refused to do one-on-one cooking classes so I had to, otherwise we will not have anything to eat up there in the rather isolated hills. The two local ladies who came up to our apartment imparted their tips and recipes for the zuppa de cozze (mussel soup – we ate 2kg of mussels between us; it was that good!), tagliatelle al funghi (pasta with mushroom sauce – I handmade the pasta myself), lemon chicken (Lucca-style, not Chinese-style of course), funghi in umido (cooked peppers – so-so only), and chocolate cakes for dessert.

We had to cook our own meals on our first night in Lucca. Getting provisions on a Sunday in Lucca was a challenge that we did not anticipate. Most shops were closed, but luckily we found this deli. For vegetables, YL resorted to cajoling the Italian girl at a sandwich shop to let him buy her 3 tomatoes for 1 Euro

Making pasta from scratch on our second night in our Lucca house. It takes a bit of work, but not as difficult as I thought it would be. At least YL gave me a thumbs up for my effort...

Lucca is a decent-sized town with a historical center that is hemmed in by 4m thick walls. The best thing about the place is the cycling! It is the town’s preferred method of transport, and so we joined the locals by renting bicycles and breezed around town effortlessly. After all the walking and relying on public transportation in London and whenever we travel, it is such a refreshing and liberating feeling to be able to get around so easily. Sophie of course enjoyed her first time on the bicycle. Chauffeured on a bicycle, I should say.

You can't really see it, but we are actually cycling on top of the 4m-thick city walls encircling the historical part of Lucca

Popo & Nai Nai, please don't scold us....

Pisa – Leaning Tower of Pisa. Full stop.

Family picture in the Campo di Miracoli (Field of Miracles) where the Leaning Tower is located. I've got one of those super-touristy shots of me propping up the tower but I'm not putting it up - YL will mock me...

Even with our crazy jam-packed schedule and having visited Italy twice, there is still so much to see in the country that if asked to choose one European country that I want to visit, it will be (still) be la bella Italy.