Kids Abroad! : Taking Your Children to Europe Doesn’t Have to Be the ‘Trip From Hell’ : Culture vs. Ice Cream : Making History Fun in Italy

As we stood in the shadow of the Pantheon, one of this city’s greatest architectural treasures, my husband and I tried to explain to our 6-year-old about symmetry and space, about the wonder of a building that has remained intact for almost 2,000 years, about poetry set in stone.

She yawned, then started whining about the sticky heat. She pointed out the myriad gelaterias (ice-cream parlors) lining the Piazza della Rotonda in front of Emperor Hadrian’s temple.

I told her of the Pantheon’s history, hoping that this first-grader would be impressed by something built before Christ was born and which had withstood greedy Popes and two world wars.

Blank.

Then I told her it had a big hole in the roof. Her eyes widened.

“What happens when it rains?” she asked.

“I imagine it gets wet,” I said.

“Can birds fly in?”

“Sure.”

She beat us to the huge bronze doors and, once inside the cool, dome-shaped building, she seemed to be as fascinated as my husband and I were by the Pantheon’s serene majesty.

Or maybe she just liked the idea of a holey roof.

Regardless, what I learned from that little exchange was just as important as all the tour books gushing over the significance of a Botticelli or a Michelangelo. That is, when traveling with children in Rome or Florence, where our daughters turned 2 and 6, it pays to view antiquity through a child’s eyes, to seek out the kid-friendly side of art, architecture and culture. The payoff, of course, is not only that the kids won’t spend the entire trip whining for hamburgers, but also that the adults gain insights they never imagined.

And when imagination fails, it helps that there is at least one gelateria on every block.

Towing our children along to Italy last August also provided us with a neat and advantageous insight. We were no longer an anonymous American couple, but that most sacred of Italian institutions--a family--and were treated accordingly.

In Italy, that meant waiters were warmer, bureaucrats were friendlier and shopkeepers seemed to show an interest in us --not just our credit cards. Several times, subway attendants simply waved us through when they saw us grappling with coins, kids and a ticket machine that was invariably malfunctioning.

On one sweltering day in Florence, a family in a small trattoria preparing to close for their midday meal took pity on our wilted, tired faces--we looked as worn as the cobblestones--and invited us in to eat with them. The mother entertained the kids while my husband, Michael, and I sipped chilled Frascati wine; the father produced cold milk for Emmeline’s bottle.

And in both cities, I never once had to stand on a bus; adults, children, even tough-looking teen-agers, always eagerly motioned for me and my children to take their seats.

We arrived in Rome from Los Angeles at midweek and spent a few days there at Villa Lituania, a Roman Catholic monastery that doubles as a modest pension for tourists. It’s situated in the Piazza Asti in the southeast section of Rome, a few blocks from Via Appia Nuova. On the weekend we headed for two weeks in Florence, where we had rented an apartment near the Ponte Vecchio, the famous 12th-Century bridge that spans the River Arno and is lined with jewelers’ shops. (It was a superb location, within a five-minute walk of some of the greatest art treasures in the world.) Then we returned to Rome and stayed for a week in a rented apartment in the northern part of the city on the Via Flaminia Nuova, a middle-class neighborhood far from the tourist centers where only Italian is spoken.

Of all European capitals, Rome probably holds the most appeal for children, but not because of its theme parks or playgrounds. On the contrary, we had to search hard for anything that remotely resembled a slide or merry-go-round.

Rather, Rome’s chief allure is that which attracts adults: its history.

We had prepped our 6-year-old, Elizabeth, on gladiators, chariot races and Roman ruins; in her excitement upon arrival, she would shout at any building with a few loose bricks, “Look, a Roman ruin!” But nothing quite prepared her for actually seeing that signature Roman ruin, the Colosseum.

Maybe it’s the violent deaths that have occurred in this rotund maze of arches and passageways that makes the place seem so alive. It is easy to imagine the aisles crowded with toga-clad spectators placing bets on gladiators or buying souvenirs from hawkers in the shade of the giant arches. Or the exotic beasts that were released through a complex system of internal elevators activated by weights and counterweights.

Inaugurated by Emperor Titus in AD 80, it could seat 50,000 people. It opened with a series of shows and spectacles that lasted 100 days; on opening day alone, 5,000 wild beasts are supposed to have died.

Our eldest bombarded us with questions about the mock sea battles staged there. (According to a pamphlet we bought at one historical site, the Romans actually flooded the arena and used gladiators in boats to stage mock, but deadly, sea battles.) An exhibit in one of the upper tiers with a mock-up of the original structure was well worth the steep but brief walk, especially to satisfy our 6-year-old’s curiosity. Our toddler was fascinated with the abundance of wild cats that roam the Colosseum grounds.

It’s not hard for an adult, much less a first-grader with an active imagination, to envision the way Circus Maximus, a Metro stop away from the Colosseum, must have looked during the reign of the Caesars. The former racetrack, a favorite of Emperor Caligula, who used to watch the contests from atop Palatine Hill, is now a park that retains the original oval shape, set in a bowl. Along the sides where more than 300,000 spectators cheered from bleachers, weeds and grass now grow.

Elizabeth took great delight in jogging around the same course where chariots once careened. Indeed, modern Romans use the ancient site for jogging, picnics or slow ambles in Rome’s insufferable August humidity, serenaded by a chorus from the cicadas that inhabit the trees lining the boulevards on the site’s perimeters.

At one point in our Rome sight-seeing, we worried about overdoing it. We needn’t have--children are not reticent about making their desires known and they let you know in the most direct ways when it’s time to stop.

After seeing Circus Maximus, we decided to walk the several blocks to the Baths of Caracalla. We realized that was a mistake when, almost there, Elizabeth sat down on what appeared to be a chunk of an ancient column and shouted, “I’m not going any more!”

She followed that with demands to be taken home--she meant California. It was still early in the trip, but we were risking seriously dousing her enthusiasm. In that brief but uncomfortable moment, she reminded us that part of the art of traveling is knowing when to stop.

Most tourists consider the Berninis and Etruscan artifacts to be the main attractions of the museum and galleries in the Villa Borghese. But the 17th-Century park, built as pleasure gardens for the powerful and aristocraticBorghese family, also happens to be one of the best places in Rome to take children. This sumptuous, orderly retreat, which seems more like a well-tended forest than a garden, comes as welcome relief from the traffic, pollution and cobblestone streets of urban Rome.

Besides the large greens where the kids can romp, there are also a small merry-go-round, a bicycle rental concession and pony rides, all situated near the Villa Medici in the southern part of the park and about a 15-minute walk from the Spanish Steps. The park’s many fountains are free of tourists and, more important, unguarded by police who are quick to shush away tiny splashing hands and feet from most of the city’s other fountains.

The Borghese complex is also home to the city zoo, with its large collection of exotic animals. The zoo buildings, like many things in this haven of antiquity, are crumbling around the edges, and it doesn’t compare to, say, the San Diego Zoo in modern design or comfort of the animals. But a Roman zoo tour is no less interesting; at times it left our two bug-eyed.

At this zoo, there tends to be very little space between the bars and the viewer. We were close enough to almost reach out and scrub the back of one young elephant taking a bath, and at one point we got sprayed.

We were also witness to a lunchtime bear feeding, which consisted of keepers driving slowly by cages in a flatbed truck and tossing whole plucked chickens through the bars. A wild bear rumpus ensued. By the time the snarling, thrashing, biting and clawing abated, nary a bone remained. No nature film could have driven home more dramatically the true ferocious nature of these creatures.

Children who find the reality of the animal kingdom fascinating can be almost as impressed with the fantasy of it re-created in centuries of art. The Room of the Animals, a sculpture gallery in the Vatican Museum, north of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, was as big a hit as the zoo. It contains a menagerie of deer, tigers, snakes, zebras, rabbits, dogs, horses, cats and assorted beasts all carved from granite, marble or fashioned in mosaics. Most of it is from Roman antiquity, but some is Egyptian or Renaissance. The children were transfixed by this gallery that seemed to be designed just for them. And because the gallery appears to have been overlooked by most of the guidebooks, we had it mostly to ourselves, sharing it only with the guard and tourists passing quickly on their way to another exhibit.

Elizabeth certainly got the willies in the Vatican’s Egyptian Museum. She did a double-take at the mummy, with its pink fingernails, strange shrunken-head appearance and scraggly henna-colored hair that, after more than 3,000 years, still retains the color of the vegetable dye. She scurried on with eyes locked forward. Amid all these visual riches, though, we were reminded in an unexpected way of another, richer sort of wealth.

It happened as we were taking the elevator, reserved for strollers and wheelchairs, to the exit. The attendant opened the doors and perfunctorily motioned us inside. But when he noticed the girls, he issued a chorus of “bella, bella!” and started cooing to them in Italian. A big, gray-haired, ruddy-faced man, he obviously loved children.

On the trip down, he leaned over Emma’s stroller and giggled along with her as he squeezed her chubby thigh. The doors opened and as we prepared to leave, his expression became very earnest. He pointed an index finger heavenward and said in English, “Is like to touch God!”

Florence, where we spent two weeks in our apartment overlooking the Ponte Vecchio, proved more of a parental challenge. Ultimately, it wasn’t the lush Boboli gardens, certainly not the art-laden Galleria degli Uffizi or Pitti Palace or even the gelaterias that kept them occupied. What delighted the 6-year-old most was that most California of diversions: a swimming pool.

The heat in Italy in August can be oppressive; some days you would sell your soul for a breeze. Elizabeth, of course, knew the antidote for this discomfort. “Do they have swimming pools here, Mom?”

The answer was a blessed yes. Florence has several public swimming pools, one of which is in the Cascine, a vast two-mile-long park on the west side of town. The park was built in the 18th Century on what was once the Medici family’s dairy farms. The pool is located on the Viale degli Olmi, about in the center of the park, and is a leisurely 30-minute walk from the Ponte Vecchio. The park also features several children’s playgrounds, complete with old but serviceable slides and merry-go-rounds. The pool costs 8,000 lira (about $6) for adults. Children are free. During the summer it stays open until 6 p.m.

The pool is a great magnet for families--on the two weekdays we visited, it was brimming with people sunning themselves or picnicking on grassy lawns.

A British acquaintance had warned us, however, that Italian public swimming pools seem to be designed only for people who know how to swim; they don’t make allowances for beginners. He was right--the shallow end started at about five feet and dropped off from there.

Because the non-swimmers--all ages and in the majority--clung to the sides or congregated near the pool ladders, Elizabeth and I swam unfettered in great expanses of blue water in what was really a rather crowded pool.

Florence is a walkers’ city and the centralized layout lends itself to burning up youthful energy while seeing the sights. It also helped that we had rented an apartment where we did, rather than staying on the outskirts and struggling with a car--the more popular option for many families. (We shunned rental cars, which start at about $200 a week plus $5-a-gallon gas, and used buses, trains, the Metro, occasional taxis and lots of walking with 2-year-old in stroller.)

The city’s noisy streets, with their shuttered stone buildings that amplify the ear-splitting blast of motor scooters, could try the patience of Job, much less the parents of two wiggly children. But peace and quiet was never more than a 15-minute walk away up into the city’s surrounding hills. One particularly rewarding hike took us to Piazzale Michelangelo and, farther up, to the church of San Miniato al Monte on the southern side of the Arno. The church affords a spectacular view of the city. Along the way we passed the former residences of Galileo and Tchaikovsky--the wonder of seeing the home of the composer of the Nutcracker was not lost on our 6-year-old.

The Tuscan countryside, legendary for its lush beauty and artistic wealth, also happens to be easily accessible by train, so when the children tired of the museum- gelato -walking routine, we headed for the station.

The Gothic city of Lucca, about two hours on the train west of Florence, immediately caught their imagination; they loved walking around the 17th-Century ramparts and walls, so wide that today they serve as a tree-lined avenue and park.

In Siena, descriptions of mercantile and artistic riches made little or no impression on Elizabeth, but she perked up when we told her of the Palio, the historic horse race run twice a year in the main square--in which each horse represents a city neighborhood or contrada . We had, in fact, arrived in this city about 1 1/2 hours south of Florence just a few days after the Aug. 16 race, and evidence of the neighborhood rivalries--the colorful flags and clan symbols--were everywhere.

Imagine a city floating on water, where cars and motorcycles are banned and where the main means of transport are boat ferries. Imagine winding streets that seem to go in no order, with footbridges and narrow alleyways that lead to nowhere. This is the stuff that children’s fantasies are made of, but it is, of course, the very real Venice and easily the highlight of the trip for our two.

We visited Venice during our second week in Florence and, although it’s about a three-hour train ride, time passed quickly for the children because the route cuts through spectacular mountain passes and rich farmland. The trip was all the more entertaining because of breakfast in the dining car, an expensive treat but well worth it as we watched them stare wide-eyed at farms and hillside monasteries as they licked jam off bread buns.

The best parts of Venice, at least from a child’s eyes, are either free or cost a nominal sum. Piazza San Marco alone (at the entrance to the Grand Canal) provides a wealth of entertainment. At one end of the square stands St. Mark’s Basilica, a glitzy synthesis of Byzantine and Romanesque architectural styles. Started in 1063, it features mosaics in the lunettes over the main doors depicting the story of St. Mark the Evangelist and which, to a child, appear to be some elaborate cartoon.

Near the basilica stands the Torre dell’Orologio, or Clock Tower, which features the animated figures of Moors that strike the hour.

And an elevator ride to the top of the brick Campanile yielded a bird’s-eye view of the Lido, the port, the city and the lagoon.

Not every trip was as rewarding as Venice, and there were times, usually in the midst of a public temper tantrum, when my husband and I asked ourselves if taking the kids along on the trip was worth the intermittent hassle and expense. And did the kids really get anything out of it or would they have been just as happy going to Disneyland?

I guess that’s up to the child. And sometimes you don’t really know until weeks after the jet lag and memories of perfect pasta have faded.

Recently, I was in the bathroom trimming Elizabeth’s bangs and asked her to describe her favorite part of the trip. Without hesitating, she stuck her hand out and raised her thumb first up, then down--a gesture reminiscent of toga-clad Victor Mature movies.

What’s that? I asked.

“You know, Mom, the Colosseum,” she said, “with the gladiators! And the chariots, and the Christians and the lions. . . .”

Somehow, I think Elizabeth will find Walt’s world a bit contrived from now on.

GUIDEBOOK

At Home in Italy

Getting there: Alitalia, British Airways, TWA, United and Delta all fly to Rome from LAX for round-trip coach fares ranging from $993-$1,510, with stopovers and restrictions on such things as length of stay, departure dates, advance purchase and refunds. Fares for children ages 2-18 are about 25% less; under 2, 10% of adult fare.

Getting around: Rome’s Metro subway and bus system is easy to use, if sometimes unpredictable. The bus and taxi system in Florence is more efficient. In both cities, we spent hours simply walking and seeing the sights.

Where to stay: Rather than staying in hotels or pensions, we rented apartments in Rome and Florence and found that, as a traveling family, it made financial and psychological sense. Many agencies, in the United States and abroad, specialize in renting apartments, villas, farmhouses and even historic buildings. But be prepared to spend a lot of time choosing the right rental agency and accommodation--we started searching almost a year before departure.

Ask as many questions as you think necessary. Then ask more. Do the windows have screens (essential in hot, buggy summertime)? Are there stores for marketing nearby and do they carry essentials for babies? Is there baby or toddler equipment, such as high chairs, toys or cribs, in the place? How convenient is public transportation? Is the place child-safe, especially balconies or terraces? Has anyone at the agency actually seen the place or stayed there? How bad is the noise level? (An important question to ask of any Italian accommodation.) Who can you call if the plumbing suddenly backs up in the middle of the night? And do they speak English? You get the picture.

Rental agencies: For a listing of agents that rent villas and apartments in Italy, start by calling or writing the Italian Government Travel Office, 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Los Angeles 90025, (310) 820-0098. (The office is scheduled to open Monday after moving from San Francisco.) My favorite source book was “Best Vacation Rentals: Europe--A Traveler’s Guide to Cottages, Condos, and Castles,” published by Prentice Hall Press.

A sampling of agencies:

Grandluxe International Inc., 165 Chestnut St., Allendale, N.J. 07401, (201) 327-2333.

At Home Abroad, Inc., Sutton Town House, 405 East 56th St., No. 6-H, New York 10022-2412, (212) 421-9165.

Four Star Living, Inc., 640 Fifth Ave., New York 10019, (212) 603-4128.

Italian Rentals, 3801 Ingomar St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20015, (202) 244-5345.

B&D; de Vogue Travel Services, 250 South Beverly Drive, Suite 203, Beverly Hills, Calif. 90212, (310) 247-8612 or (800) 438-4748.

More alternatives to hotels: We spent our first few days in Rome at the Villa Lituania, a very accommodating Roman Catholic monastery where our fare included three simple but hearty meals daily, wine included. And it was very quiet. Contact the Italian Government Travel Office for more information or the archdiocese of the city where you plan to stay.

Where to grocery shop: In Rome, the Standa supermarkets, in addition to selling staples similar to those found in U.S. markets, were also an excellent source for such items as fresh breads and cheeses, salami, prosciutto and wine. We also shopped daily at a small open-air market near our apartment.

In Florence, we frequented the huge Mercato Centrale, situated about a block north of the Medici Chapel.

For some of Florence’s best and most exotic foods, try Via dei Neri, situated about two blocks north of the Arno River and just off Via dei Benci. In the small shops here we found some of the best wines, meats, breads, sweet rolls and cheeses for which this Tuscan city is known.