My son was always out in front, walking quickly, often holding the hands of his two girls, five and seven, who were trotting along beside him. His wife, Fay, was a few steps behind as we made our way through five Italian cities. And I was 5 or 6 steps behind her, walking as fast as I could, tapping my way with hiking poles and watching the ground to make sure I wouldn’t trip on bumpy sidewalks.

It was the happiest, most delightful trip I’ve had in a long time: three weeks in Italy, from Milan to Florence, Siena, Naples, and back up to Rome.  I was surprised and thrilled when my son and his wife had invited me to come on this trip.

I’d spent time in Italy twice before: when I was 19 and had a student internship at the Italian publishing company, Mondadori, and when I was 50 and rented a home near Siena for a month with my partner and my two young kids. The home had a pool and became our base for driving all over Tuscany.

My son, Andrew, remembering the trip with fondness, had spent a semester of college studying in Siena and had named his first daughter Siena. It had been life-changing for him, as Italy had been for me when I was 19.

Italy had introduced me to another culture: a romance language spoken with exuberant hand gestures, opera, wine, great food, and different customs, especially relating to dating and sex. I’d arrived a virgin, and left in the same state, but eager to change that as soon as I found the right guy.

I’d been indoctrinated by my mother to save my virginity for my husband. I thought every girl I knew did so. But on that trip, I learned that three of my close friends had been sleeping with their boyfriends, and no one regarded them as “cheap.”

I’d been holding back for nothing!

Now it’s 60 years later, and when I try to speak Italian, it comes out mostly Spanish. During the decades I was raising my kids, I had a nanny from El Salvador and we spoke Spanish every day. But when I try to retrieve my Italian, people look at me with puzzlement. Andrew urges me, “Mom, speak English, please, they get that.”

Andrew and Fay, who’s Chinese and had met my son while he was studying and working in China, did a great deal of research. So on our second day, in Florence, we took two buses to Il Gigante Adventure Park, which has long swinging ropes and adventurous contraptions for kids to play on. The girls immediately ran to spots that allowed them to climb and swing. They were given vests with cords so they could clip themselves onto wires and swoop through the trees.

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They were in heaven, as were we, watching them and watching the Italian parents who had the same joy and protectiveness in their eyes.

The trip to Italy proved to be more challenging for me than either my son or I had anticipated. In the past few years, my short-term memory has become less reliable. I have good days and less-good days, and did not feel confident, after landing in Milan, to venture out by myself and remember how to get back to the Airbnb we were renting. I’d stopped driving several years before, and have been taking Uber and Lyft to easily get around anywhere in the U.S.  But to my shock, there was no Uber in Italy. There was Uber in France and there’d been Uber in Ukraine when I’d visited there before Russia invaded the country, and I wondered, who was paying off whom to keep Uber out of Italy?

Taxis were not ubiquitous, so we walked and took buses. Fay and Andrew could quickly map out a route on their phones, but I could not.  On our second day in Florence, after lunch, Andrew asked me to take his five-year-old, Emma, home on the bus. He told me which numbered bus to take and what street to get off at. I kept repeating the name of the street so I wouldn’t forget it. And when we boarded the bus, I asked the driver to tell me when we reached our street.  After ten minutes, he stopped the bus, looked back and said, “Signora,” and pointed toward the door. I grabbed Emma’s hand and we scurried off. Then I looked around, with no idea where we were and where our building might be.

Emma said, “It’s this way,” and started scampering to the left. No, I said, standing stock still.

“It’s this way,” she said and dashed off to the right. I yelled for her to come back. I did not recognize anything. I called Fay on her cell; she was at our place, and told me to stay where I was.

“Mommy!” Emma yelled. Fay had come out on the balcony, right across the street.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized: I’d left the walking poles on the bus. I had to buy two Italian canes—shorter than I needed—but workable, at a nearby pharmacy.

One of the girls’ favorite activities was to straddle a pole as if it were a horse, trot around and race, imagining they were riding in the Palio, which takes place every year around the main square of Siena, while crowds are jammed inside the course, screaming and cheering the horses and riders dressed in period costumes.

The girls were lively and never complained when we made visits (short) to sites like the Accademia, to see the 17-foot-high statue of David by Michelangelo.

I’d told them before how it had taken the artist three years to cut and shape the enormous figure out of a giant block of white marble. They were more interested that, as with other statues, he was naked and they could see his larger-than-life genitals.

I’d remembered Italy as one of the greatest places in the world for food. But after a week of eating pasta twice a day in restaurants, which we ended up rating no higher than a B+, we started shopping at the nearby supermercato and eating in our place. Fay’s a terrific cook, and made vegetables and pasta with sauces from the supermercato that only slightly resembled anything available in the U.S. (Far more delicious.) The cheese section alone was inspiring: 20 or 30 varieties of mozzarella, with samples offered.

And the gelato! It became a high point of every day, and was nothing like the so-called gelato in this country. It explodes with flavor in the mouth, melting swiftly as it slides over the tongue. We liked to sample different flavors that we hadn’t heard of, but I always ended up with chocolate—ultra dark and wicked. There was a gelato shop across from our place in Rome, and at all hours we could see people—from toddlers to gray-beards—sitting outside in folding chairs, eating gelato.

We also discovered a liqueur, Meloncello, made of melon from the Amalfi coast, which even Fay, who doesn’t care for alcoholic drinks, loved so much she packed several bottles for me to carry home for her, along with tiny jars of Barilla Rosso pasta sauce. (a delicious version that’s sadly not available in the U.S.)

The next week, I would fly back to Colorado and she and the family would go on to China

NEXT BLOG:  Pompei, and The Boys of San Marco.