Spending the summer in Europe with my two teen kids has been less stressful than anticipated. My 16-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son have slowed their pace, found the humor in situations and become more independent – especially when I force them to turn off their laptops.
They quickly made friends with a small group of Miami University students, who invite my kids to shop, hang out in their dorm rooms, attend movies and go get gelato.
The teens gamely roam our base city of Florence during the day – when it’s not 40 degrees C outside, that is.
They window shop, watch people and conduct their own gelato taste tests across Florence.
Then, of course, there’s Italian MTV, an endless source of teen amusement.
I insisted from the start that the kids attend the other Miami University classes being taught in Florence. (I excused them from the exams!)
So every Tuesday morning, they sleepily roll out of bed, down Frosted Flakes and tromp up the cobblestone Via dei Serragli to attend the wonderful art and architecture lectures given by one of my Florentine professor colleagues.
When I can join them, we attend that professor’s walking tours of the city to illustrate what she’s just discussed.
Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, the kids view the art films being shown at a local movie house by my other Florentine colleague. I excuse them from the film discussions, held later, so my colleague is not burdened with extra students.
But that may be a mistake, since the kids usually return grumbling that the movie made no sense.
That was the case last week when the art film was Federico Fellini’s 1963 gem, “8½.”
At dinner that night at Istituto Gould, the Miami summer program home base, one of my journalism students, Kevin, cheered up my kids by saying with a grimace, “You could never understand “8 ½” if you didn’t read the reviews beforehand, like we did.”
But it is on our weekend trips that I have to make the most accommodations for teen traveling companions.
For example, last week we rented a car and wandered through Tuscany. My son was the master map reader, navigating me through the myriad roundabouts. Signage is great in Tuscany, but often sneaks up on drivers like a subliminal message.
With teens, outdoor art becomes a playground, public piazzas a theme park. So it was in San Gimignano, a sublime hilltop village with 15 stone towers where we stayed for two nights.
My son discovered the rooftop vantage with 220-degree views of Tuscan countryside. That proved to be a relaxing place to talk at sunset about everything we had seen and experienced.
In Volterra, a walled hilltop town with breathtaking vistas, instead of endlessly wandering the maze of stone-paved streets, we ventured onto the path following the Etruscan and medieval walls.
This is where Volterrans would dump hot oil from above to drive away attackers.
We came to a gate into the town that had been built in 400 B.C., stopping to imagine life then.
But it was when we reached Montepulciano that my 16-year-old came alive. Just weeks ago the cast of “New Moon,” the second book spawned in the wildly popular “Twilight” vampire series, wrapped up filming here.
When we walked into Montepulciano’s main piazza, my daughter squealed, “There it is!” and ran across the square to a medieval stone building with a clock tower. Such a clock tower building was an iconic emblem from the book, hence this town’s choice as film location, rather than Volterra, where the book’s scene was set.
We paid 2 euro to climb to the top. Her brother took photos. I took photos. She smiled.
We wandered into an enoteca on a patio overlooking the countryside. As I sipped the globally known local vintage, my daughter asked the wait staff where else filming had taken place in town, keen to see them all.
One of the waiters, who spoke excellent English, mentioned that the film’s director had frequented this eatery and stayed in an apartment above.
“We have the ‘New Moon’ storyboard downstairs,” he told her. “Would you like to see it?”
Silly question.
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