When you google things to do in Italy, your search reveals, unsurprisingly, a huge number of Roman remains and as I am a Classics teacher – this is my absolute dream.
There are Roman archaeological sites all over the UK and we are lucky enough to live about an hours drive from Chester.
The other major reason we were looking forward to Italy was because my children are massive fans of Italian food.
Breakfast
We ate hot rolls with butter and jam. The Kiwi and I drank lots of coffee from the home coffee machine! I think it would also be really easy and fun to head out to one of the many Italian themed coffee shops around. There are three in our village – Nero and Costa and Riva and all of them are very child friendly.
The Adventure
The Roman remains in Chester are free to visit and (with a bit of supervision) really brilliant spaces for children. We spent some time in the old amphitheatre and then headed to the forum. The kids loved crawling around the old bath house and Penny was actually pretty interested in the history too. Highly recommended and I suspect that we only scratched the surface as there is a museum there too and of course the very famous walls.
Lunch
We has checked and there was a Pizza Express, Carluccios and Bella Pasta all in the centre of Chester. Pre-children I would have tried to find some gorgeous little independent place but I know my current limitations! Usually, of the chain restaurants, I would head straight for Carluccios but Bella Pasta was a cosier option and has a brilliant kids menu so we went there instead. Not the best restaurant ever but Penny and Freddie loved it and the red wine was very drinkable…
More Adventures
I absolutely associate my own childhood trips to Italy with visiting Cathedrals. Although we are not Catholic we always used to light a candle for my Nana who had died. We have experienced some major losses in our family recently and so this visit to Chester Cathedral was especially memorable and important. Freddie enjoyed the echo a little too much though so we didn’t linger very long.
Supper
Think Italy and I think of family and so they came over for a family feast of pizza, pasta, red wine and gelato. It was a fantastic end to the day.
We listened to Dean Martin and ‘Where do you go to my lovely’ (it is about Italy I claimed as it repeatedly listed French places. But it is – wait until the end!).
Next time!
I definitely think we will be going back to Italy. Next time I’d like to make food with the kids;
Pizza faces
Ice cream
Gnocchi
Would all be fun to make ourselves. A visit to a museum would be brilliant too, or Hadrian’s Wall isn’t that far away.
I think you could do some great crafting for Italy too; Masks and mosaics would work well and would create a great effect.
For the grown ups, after bed time, Italian drinks and appetisers just can’t be beaten. Movie wise there are lots of great epics out there like Gladiator, the Godfather, Roman Holiday and Goodfellas. Or you could do what we did and get stuck into a box set of the Sopranos.
Bellissimo!
