Why I Take Lila to Italy in October Instead of Spring Break

The first time I took Lila to Italy in October, she was eight, and I did it because the flights were cheap and I was a newly divorced single mom counting every dollar twice. The trip turned out to be one of the great accidental decisions of my parenting life, and I have been doing it ever since. October in Italy is, no exaggeration, the best version of the country, and the only reason most American families miss it is that they have decided, collectively and without evidence, that you can only travel during school breaks.

You can pull her out. The world keeps spinning. The light in Florence in late October is the light Botticelli was painting. You will never get that in June.

The Case for October

Let me make this with numbers, because vague is not a Em move:

Flights: JFK to FCO in late October on Delta or ITA is routinely $500–$700 round trip. The same flight in mid-June is $1,200, and you are sitting next to a bachelorette party.
Crowds: The Uffizi in October on a Tuesday morning is a museum. The Uffizi in June at any hour is a queue.
Weather: Mid-60s to low 70s, dry, the kind of light photographers fly in for. It is not beach weather. You are not going for the beach.
Food: October is the start of truffle season in Tuscany, the end of fig season, and the moment when every trattoria menu pivots to the things that make Italian food famous. You cannot get bistecca fiorentina in June and feel the same way about it.
Renato: In June, Renato's no-sign place behind the Pantheon has a wait. In October, Renato is sitting at the bar reading the paper when we walk in, and he hugs Lila like she is his.

The Trip We Did Last October

Eighth grade, late October, six days. We flew into Rome on a Saturday, ITA 608. Stayed in a small hotel near Campo de' Fiori — Hotel Sole al Pantheon, which is unfussy and walkable to everything. Three days in Rome, then the Frecciarossa to Florence — 1.5 hours, you sit, you watch the countryside, Lila reads, I pretend to read. Three days in Florence at a tiny apartment off Via dei Servi.

Rome, Three Days

Pantheon at 8am when it is empty.
Renato's place for dinner the first night. Carbonara, cacio e pepe, a half liter of the house red. Lila and Renato discuss her tennis tournament in fast Italian.
Galleria Borghese on a Tuesday morning. You have to book in advance. Worth it.
A long walk in Trastevere. A gelato at Otaleg.
One off-the-clock afternoon at Villa Doria Pamphilj where we just sat on a bench and watched a guy throw a ball for a dog for an hour.

Florence, Three Days

Uffizi on Wednesday morning. Botticelli. The Lippi. The light.
Mercato Centrale for lunch, upstairs, where Lila ate a panino with porchetta and announced she was now a person who eats porchetta.
A bookshop on Via dei Servi where we bought a pressed-flower bookmark that later made a cameo in a substitute teacher's life — but that is a different post.
Climbing the Duomo at sunrise. Four hundred and sixty-three steps. Lila's tennis legs hated me. The view from the top is the trip.
One nothing-day in the Boboli Gardens with sandwiches.

The School Days She Missed

Four. A Monday and a Tuesday on the front end (we left Saturday, returned Sunday-the-following), plus the Friday before. Lila brought a folder. She did one math worksheet on the Frecciarossa, one Spanish reading on the flight home, and made up a Bio quiz the Wednesday she got back. Her teachers were fine. One of them — her humanities teacher, who is the kind of woman I would be friends with in another life — asked her to write up a paragraph on something she saw in Florence and read it to the class. That is the kind of thing that happens when you stop being weird about the absence.

October in Florence is the trip. June in Florence is the line.

The Pushback

The pushback I get on October trips is usually some version of "but it is not a real vacation week." I want to be clear that this is the point. Real vacation weeks are when everyone else is also on vacation. The whole reason October works is that it isn't one. The empty Uffizi. The cheap flights. Renato sitting at the bar. None of that exists in June.

What This Costs vs. June

Our October trip last year, six days, two people, including flights, hotels, train, food, and museums, came in just under $3,200. The same trip in June would have been north of $5,500, and the trains would have been booked, and the Borghese would have been a fight. Four pulled school days saved me $2,300 and gave me a better trip. That is the math.

Stop waiting for spring break to take your kid to Italy. Spring break in Italy is for people who don't know any better, and you, reading this post, now know better. Pull her out for four days in late October. Book the cheap flight. Get on the Frecciarossa. Eat at the place with no sign. The light in Florence is doing something this week that it will not do in April, and Renato is at the bar, and he remembers your kid.