When we last left this story, my husband and I had enjoyed a fantastic day in Monaco and Eze. We surprised ourselves with our ability to climb to great heights, and renewed in our own minds not only our fitness for, but our desire to, travel the world together. The kids, feeling unwell, spent the day on the cruise ship and had an equally enjoyable time retreating from travel.

We let them beg off seeing Monaco and Eze with the caveat that they had to be rested and ready to go when we docked in Livorno, as we had a tour of Florence and Pisa arranged for that day. So, at 7am we were all up, dressed, and breakfasting in preparation for what amounted to a 12-hour-long day in about 90-degree heat.

Sound grueling? It was. Whereas the day before my husband and I were left to our own devices in Monaco and Eze by a very relaxed, calm, and easygoing guide, we were met in Livorno by a guide who made us put our names on a sign-in sheet so she wouldn’t lose any of us. This should have been a warning sign. But what could we do? We signed our names, got on the bus, and headed to Florence.

But, no, actually. There was a traffic concern that made the driver and guide decide to bring us to Pisa first. We were told, quite clearly, that we were there to see the leaning tower, but would not have enough time to go in, climb it, or see anything else but the outside. We were okay with that . . . until we got there.

Pisa was magnificent. Not only were the fields surrounding it full of beautiful sunflowers, but the Piazza del Duomo, where the leaning tower is located, was more beautiful than I ever imagined. I didn’t realize the tower is a “campanile” or free-standing bell tower, and only part of a campus that also includes a cathedral, a baptistry, and a cemetery. I also learned that the famous scientist, Galileo Galilei, was born in Pisa, baptized in its baptistry, attended mass at the cathedral, and did experiments using the bell tower. Walking in the footsteps of the astronomer, philosopher. scientist, and mathematician who revolutionized the way we conceptualize our place in the universe, I was devastated to know that we only had 45 minutes to explore before we had to move on. The kids were sad, too–after all, their favorite Baby Einstein video was Baby Galileo.

This was one of those moments where time layered. I remembered learning about Galileo and his persecution by the Church in science class. I remembered my eldest in her Baby Einstein bouncy seat watching Baby Galileo while I caught a shower. I remembered my youngest in the Baby Einstein bouncy seat, desperately trying to get out while being entertained by her sister who was distracted by the video while I caught a shower. I remembered holding each of the girls in my arms while they were sick and feverish, or serving them lunch, and talking to them about Galileo and science and discovery. They remembered a lot of this, too, and were almost as sad as I was that we had to leave so soon.

But, we had a schedule to keep, and the next stop was Florence, “The Capital of Artists.” I was so excited to show the girls the city that I had seen only once before, on my college trip to Rome and Florence with their dad before we were even dating. The bus ride was about an hour and a half, but I was ready to jet as soon as the bus stopped. “Wait,” our guide said. “First we have to stop at the leather store so you can all use the bathrooms.”

The leather store? I didn’t want to stop at the leather store. But the tour included a stroll on the Ponte Vecchio, a lunch, and a trip to Santa Croce. I didn’t know where any of those things were, and we had paid for lunch, and we did all need to use the bathroom. So . . . we followed. We were treated to a lecture on leather, a sales pitch, and relatively clean (and free) bathrooms. Evidently, there are no free public bathrooms in Italy. They all charge. This is somewhat of a big deal.

We were then herded back in line and walked to Ponte Vecchio, or what my daughters called, “a decrepit bridge that you can’t even see because there are so many people it doesn’t even seem like it can hold them all.” They weren’t wrong. It was old, crowded, and hot, and we really couldn’t see anything except, of course, the Uffizi Gallery rising up on the other side.

Standing in front of one of the most magnificent museums in the world, housing works by Giotto, da Vinci, and Michelangelo, our guide said, “There’s absolutely no time to visit the Uffizi, but if you want after lunch you will probably have enough time to tour Santa Croce.” My heart fell once again. No time to tour the Uffizi. I would have had at least a half hour if we hadn’t stopped in the leather store. I bet the museum had bathrooms.

We looked at the sculptures outside the Uffizi: a replica of David, marble so beautifully carved it looked like flesh; statues of gods and goddesses and all of Ovid’s myths; statues of Roman officials and generals and citizens just littering the central plaza like Michelangelo was having a garage sale. The guide tried to tell us things about all of these statues, but there must have been thousands of people in that plaza, and there was no chance we could hear her above the hubbub. We couldn’t even see her. I saw my kids’ eyes start to glaze. I tried to concentrate, but I knew they were hating the crowds and the noise and getting absolutely nothing out of this experience except learning to endure extreme discomfort. We should have just jetted from the bus to the Uffizi, but now we were about an hour or more into the tour, lunch was on the horizon, and everyone was hungry.

Our guide led us through some beautiful, narrow, old streets for another half hour before we arrived at what looked like a palace. Evidently Napoleon had stayed there at one point, but it had been converted into an event hall. We sat at tables of ten while a lovely Italian man came out, put a large serving spoonful of pasta with tomato sauce on one side of our plate, then put another large serving spoonful of pasta with pesto sauce on the other side. We passed the bread. There was wine that none of us wanted to drink because it was so hot and exhausting outside. Then they brought us an after dinner drink, which tasted like sour frangelico, with a biscotti. And that took another hour that could have been spent in the Uffizi.

After that our guide set us free with the recommendation to go to Santa Croce Basilica in the hour of the tour we had left. Almost in tears, I entered the church, trying to be grateful for the time we had in this beautiful city as John and the girls laughed at our pasta lunch. “A bottle of red, a bottle of white, a lump of red pasta, a lump of green pasta, and a tiny cookie,” they sang to Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”

I took deep breaths and talked to myself. “Be grateful. Be happy. Smile. Don’t scold. This is how they’re trying to make the best of things. They’re enjoying each other. The lunch was another total waste of time. They’re allowed to make fun of it to get over their disappointment. This is not the time to lecture them on ingratitude.” So I went to a pew in the church and started to say what had become my daily rosary. They sat down and let me pray a bit, then my younger daughter spoke up. “Is it hot in here?”

“No air-conditioning,” my husband answered.

“What?!” both girls exclaimed in unison. “What do you mean no air-conditioning?”

“Shhhh.” I said. “This building is old and made of stone. Most European buildings are. They don’t have air conditioning.”

“Wait,” the youngest said, “How do you NOT have air conditioning? The leather store had air conditioning. It’s been around for almost 100 years.”

“Well, they don’t need it,” I said. “It gets cold here, and honestly it’s much cooler in here than it was outside.”

“The cruise ship’s sauna is cooler than it was outside, Mom,” said my oldest. 

“Let’s get up and look around,” my husband suggested.

And what did we see? The tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and monuments to Dante Aligheri and Florence Nightengale. We saw the art of Donatello, Giotto, and Brunelleschi. We stood among over 600 years of history. I wanted to melt into the stone. I wanted photos of everything. I wanted to spend days here, just basking in the timelessness of it all. The girls had wandered around, then sat in the pews playing games on their phones. My husband was with them texting someone about something. 

My ankle, which had been flaring from Achilles tendonitis since September, started to spike lightning up my leg. I limped over to the kids and sat in the pew. 

“We ready to go?” my husband asked. I nodded. We got up, I made one more pass by Dante’s monument, and prayed that his soul was in Paradiso, since his exile kept his body from burial in his beloved Florence. My husband touched my shoulder. “I promise we’ll come back,” he said. “We’ll get a hotel room and stay a week. You can camp next to Dante’s memorial. Take a nap by Galileo’s tomb.” I laughed. He is a good man, and he loves me. For that I am most grateful.

We got gelato then walked back to the bus. We slept on the way back to the ship, then dragged ourselves to our rooms. My husband noticed my limp. “You okay?” he asked. 

“I think I’m overdoing it a little.”

“Today was hard. I didn’t enjoy it at all,” he said. 

“Yeah. It wasn’t our style.”

“You know if we’d just been allowed to go off on our own we would have had time to tour the Uffizi.”

I nodded. 

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?” he asked. 

I read my itinerary. “Um, a motorboat tour of the Ligurian coast.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “You know we all get seasick on little boats, right?”

“I don’t,” I said. 

“As happy as you are to be doing all this touring, your body is getting the most beat up of all of us. Why don’t we just take a knee, forget tomorrow’s most-likely-vomit-inspiring tour, and relax on the ship?”

“The next day’s tour is on a boat, too,” I informed him.

“And the day after that is our sea day. Why don’t we take a long weekend, sleep in, enjoy the ship and just . . . relax on our vacation.”

“But ITALY!” I started to cry. 

“We’ll come back,” he said. 

“It’s our last family vacation!”

“Yes, it probably is,” he said. “So let’s do something we all like. Let’s stay on the ship.”

I sighed. He was right. The ship was air conditioned. It had a spa, two pools, a sauna, and all the food anyone could possibly want. We told the girls our plans. 

“We can do ship activities, Mom!” my oldest said. “We can do coloring, and look! They’re doing a class on making paper flowers! We can do that!”

I nodded. “Yeah. We can do that.” 

The girls, thrilled that we’d be spending more time afloat, accompanied us to dinner talking about all the things they wanted to do. “We can watch movies!” my oldest said. “Plus there’s a silent disco! MOM! We HAVE TO do silent disco! You’re going to love it!”

“With your mom’s ankle as it is, I’m not sure she’ll do much dancing,” my husband said.

“Oh, I’m GOING to silent disco,” I said. 

And I did. It may have, actually, been the best part of the cruise. We all slept in the next day, ate our fill of everything, went to the spa, then after dinner when my husband and younger daughter retired to the room my eldest and I went dancing. 

For those of you who don’t know about silent disco, everyone who wants to dance gets headsets. No music is played out loud, only through the headset. The DJ plays different playlists—in our case, there were three channels. If you don’t like what’s being played on one channel, you can switch to another, but your headset lights up with the color of the channel you’re listening to, so you can see what everyone around you is hearing as they dance.

Watching over 100 people, in led flashing headphones, dancing to music different than what I was listening to, while also dancing to my music, was an absolute high point of the cruise for me. The blue channel played mostly 80’s music, so that was the one I was on the most. The green channel played modern-ish stuff like Pitbull. The red channel alternated between Latin music and 50’s dance music. 

There were people of all ages—some older than my mom, some younger than my daughter—and when we would see that we were on the same channel, we’d nod at each other and dance our hearts out. There was a woman dancing and singing to Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” that was so expressive and emotive in her dancing and singing that I couldn’t help make eye contact and dance with her across the room. 

My eldest and I danced to Pitbull’s “Tonight,” Simple Mind’s “Don’t You Forget About Me,” Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin,” Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” and so many more! Every time I’d change my channel I’d look around to see the other people on the same channel as me nodding at me like, “Good choice, right? Yeah!” There was a man dancing to the Latin music channel who was so caught up in the music his eyes were closed and he was just, as the kids say, “going.”

My daughter and I laughed and danced, danced and laughed, and she got tired before I did! I came back to our room sweatier than I did from our jaunt through Florence, but so much happier because I felt really connected to my daughter at the end of it. 

And really, that’s what was warring within me during this trip. My desperate desire to see and appreciate the history and culture of the places we were in, and my equally fervent desire to connect with my family. That night, after I showered and climbed into bed, with half of our vacation still ahead of us, I wondered which was going to win?