Getting Started

Why does this little fellow look so happy? Maybe because he and his Mimi
( along with his mother ) are preparing to spend seven weeks in Italy.

So...at the request of my friends and family ( O.K.-really one close friend ), I am going to diary my experiences of planning and executing a summer trip to Tuscany with our daughter and her eight month old baby.

Our daughter, her husband and their son live in Los Angeles and Grandfather and I live in the mountains about 70 miles north of Atlanta. She is "attending" online graduate school at Boston University. One of the requirements for the master's in art education is to either spent two weeks in Boston painting in a studio or spending six weeks in Tuscany plein air painting and studying art history. A difficult choice?

With it not being feasible for her husband to get away to Italy, I was asked to go and readily agreed.
However, the logistics of such a trip have been the root of many hours on the computer researching housing, transportation, tours ( 'winging' it with a baby is less than desirable ) and all the other assorted details that are entailed. Although I have traveled fairly extensively...one of my first overseas trips was to rejoin my parents in South America at age 6 about 60 years ago...planning a sojourn with a baby is a bit more complicated especially when this fellow can not be "slinged" or "back packed" as he weighs over 27 pounds and is the size of many two year olds.

Soon after the decision was made by Betsy to actually apply for the program, I got online to begin looking for accommodations. The BU website revealed that the university houses students at a villa about 35 minutes north of Florence near a town called Borgo San Lorenzo. Because we had successfully used VRBO ( Vacation Rentals By Owner ) for a previous trip to Costa Rica, I started there and at other websites geared toward rentals in Italy and particularly in the area around Borgo San Lorenzo. The first night, I looked at numerous entries with little knowledge of the area especially distances. Finally, I chose one that seemed a possibility and emailed for availability. The next morning, an email was received that indicated availability. An hour later, another email arrived with pictures of the villa and the property. As I was looking at the photos, I thought I had seen the swimming pool, tennis courts and the sweeping vistas somewhere before that email.

Quickly, I returned to the BU website and found that the villa was the same used by BU as their Italian headquarters. This certainly seemed serendipity to me and I rapidly replied to the agent to confirm that the apartment was indeed on the BU grounds. Within hours, a welcomed reply arrived from the owner of the property who informed me that not only was it the same property but that her husband is a professor of education at BU and her brother-in-law teaches the summer painting courses. She also is an educator which was pleasant news as I am a retired school administrator myself! The first pieces of the puzzle fell into place and the adventure seemed destined to be successful. Now Betsy had to be accepted into the program and all the other details had to be worked out before June for  us to spend an extended period of time out of the USA.