Off the beaten path activities - Italy with teens

[Anonymous]

We are headed to Italy for spring break with two young teens. Besides the major attractions, what activities would you recommend?

[Anonymous]

Where in Italy? Italy is a big place

[Anonymous]

I liked San Gimignano in Tuscany and would have liked to stay there longer than 2 hours as part of a daylong bus tour.

If you go to Venice, do the Learn to Row experience with Venice on Board. Glassblowing demos in Murano are touristy but might be cooler than seeing more museums. We also walked through the Jewish ghetto and took note of the various old buildings (nothing open to visit when we were there). There's a tour of the city's mechanical clock tower that looked good but we didn't have time to do it.

Gourmet gelato is endlessly interesting. Look for recs in each place.

In Rome, I saw but did not book, mosaic-making classes. We did a tour of the Domus Aurea that included an Augmented Reality show. Those are neat...kind of on the cutting edge of tourism.

[Anonymous]

Definitely do a food walking tour.

[Anonymous]

We didn’t do this because we couldn’t make it work with our schedule but there’s a group that runs a bike tour out the Allianz way to the catacombs. That seemed very cool.

[Anonymous]

Come on !! you need to narrow down what area you’ll be in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where in Italy? Italy is a big place

+1 lol

[Anonymous]

Are you aware that it’s a jubilee year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I liked San Gimignano in Tuscany and would have liked to stay there longer than 2 hours as part of a daylong bus tour.

If you go to Venice, do the Learn to Row experience with Venice on Board. Glassblowing demos in Murano are touristy but might be cooler than seeing more museums. We also walked through the Jewish ghetto and took note of the various old buildings (nothing open to visit when we were there). There's a tour of the city's mechanical clock tower that looked good but we didn't have time to do it.

Gourmet gelato is endlessly interesting. Look for recs in each place.

In Rome, I saw but did not book, mosaic-making classes. We did a tour of the Domus Aurea that included an Augmented Reality show. Those are neat...kind of on the cutting edge of tourism.

Looks gorgeous, but would teens like this?

[Anonymous]

The Ferrari museum and factory tour in Maranello.

[Anonymous]

we went to a mozzarella di buffalo farm tour south of Naples. amazing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we went to a mozzarella di buffalo farm tour south of Naples. amazing.

With teens? What did they think?

[Anonymous]

PP. About teens liking San Gimignano. I was very interested in medieval history when I was in 8th grade. A lot of kids like "knights and princesses" material at some point in their childhood. What's interesting about San Gimignano is that it has more of these tall "medieval $ky$craper$" than other Tuscan places. They used to be common. Florence was full of such towers in the corresponding period. This kind of setup was somewhat unique to this area because of politics and landholding patterns.

Anyway, in a two hour or less bus tour visit, we only had enough time to buy gelato at a recommended shop and walk to a high point at ground level in town. I would have liked to go up in a tower and seen the town museum which has a scale model of what the town was like in the Middle Ages.

We took this bus tour out of Florence with a tween and a teen. In one day we went to Siena, lunch at a restaurant, San Gimignano and Pisa. It was efficient and made use of all the time we could spare. But a driving trip through Tuscany might be fun. There are castles there you can stay in.

In Florence, we stayed at a hotel in a medieval tower. However, the building was not easily detectable as such from the outside. It had a great rooftop view which my kids enjoyed. It's Hotel Torre Guelfa.

https://www.hoteltorreguelfa.com/

There's a medieval museum a few blocks away called Palazzo Davanzati if anyone wants more info on how people lived in the period of these towers. When we were there, a school group was going through it.

https://bargellomusei.it/en/museum/palazzo-davanzati/

Also in Florence, my kids liked the Leonardo DaVinci machine replica museum much better than the Uffizi.

https://www.museoleonardodavincifirenze.com/

The truth is, most kids are bored by endless landmark churches and art museums. So visit sparingly.

[Anonymous]

PP again. It's really hard to know what will interest kids without knowing them personally.

From my first trip to Italy at age 9, I was pretty interested in buying souvenirs. And I learned to drink tea from an English girl my age. The sightseeing highlight was definitely Pompeii. My next trip, at 16, it was the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and all things Venice.

I revisited my Rome and Venice trip with my kids at age 50. So I mostly took them to the standard sights then filled in with what I missed on my first visits. Occasionally the parents divided up, with my husband taking the boys while I did a deeper visit to a museum. He sometimes does bike tours with them while I go to museums.

Both for myself as a kid, and my own kids, St. Peter's was not fun to visit. It's just huge. I went to the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel with the kids. They are crowded and full of people who don't seem to be too interested in art. So maybe skip those. I hadn't seen them at age 16. My kids saw the Sistine Chapel then about an hour of the museum on the walk back to the main entrance. After that they were done and just sat in the cafeteria playing on devices. (Yes, the Vatican Museums have pizza by the slice!)

In Rome, I think it's interesting to learn about the Etruscans. There is some of their art at the Vatican but there is a specialized museum elsewhere in Rome that I didn't get to. A kid who is interested in Egyptian and Greek civilizations might like Etruscan artifacts and a smaller museum.

I liked art, architecture, and history as a kid but my own kids don't feel the same. Everything I've recommended to you so far was neutral to positive for my kids. On some days, neutral was a family win if I really liked the place. Neutral means the kids did sightseeing with no complaints, seemed mildly enthused, and good gelato could make the whole day a win for everyone.

Something I really like to do with kids in Europe is to buy groceries at local grocery stores. It can be fun for them to pick out stuff to try. If you're staying in a hotel, you can still have a supper made from deli foods and boxed foods like cookies, crackers, etc. In Italy, we bought food from grocery stores at least four times despite staying in hotels. Our preferred way to travel is to get an apartment and live like a local for a few days, including shopping. But we do it on the go, also. I find it helps with picky eating. And sorry to say, I haven't had much luck with stumbling into great Italian restaurant food during my trips. When my family members are hungry, that's when we eat ASAP. Targeting restaurants requires structuring the day around the meals. We structure days around the sights we want to see.

[Anonymous]

If you're in Florence, teens might enjoy climbing to the top of the Duomo.

However, it might not be the right thing for those not comfortable in confined spaces. There are YouTube videos that can give you a feel for what it's like.