Family Vacations: Instagram VS. Reality

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that my family took a trip to Italy this summer. In fact, on Instagram, I am still very much in the middle of my trip, even though in my actual life, I am writing this post from my friend’s house on Rhode Island, who I am visiting while my kids are away at camp. We’ll get to sleepaway camp before they come home, I hope!

If you watch my Instagram stories, you followed our trip to Rome, then to a farmhouse in Tuscany, a day spent in Tivoli, a night in Naples and then a drive down to Positano. The last thing I posted was a few days ago; it was us arriving at our AirBnb (which involved quite a set of treacherous stairs) and checking out the fabulous view. I haven’t posted anything else since because I’ve been trying to figure out how honest I should be about what happened next.

Mind you, in the scheme of vacation mishaps, this one was pretty minor. I just didn’t like the place we were staying. Minus the balcony with the view (which was huge and fantastic), the main house was a pretty cramped space with a dingy kitchen, and a terrible set up for the kids. They each had their own room, but they were outside, off the balcony and not in the main house, which did not feel right to me. Granted, our whole area was behind a locked gate, but it still felt unsafe putting them in these little outdoor rooms (Harlow’s room didn’t even have a window), where they would have to go outside to even use the bathroom.

We also arrived at our AirBnb in the middle of an 100º day, after walking down an endless maze of incredibly steep stairs with all our bags, with sunlight directly overhead. When we got to our place, there was not even an inch of shade on our balcony. All that anyone wanted in that moment was a little relief; ideally, to relax at a hotel by a pool, and instead we were huddled inside a cave of a space around a window AC. I don’t want to insult the place too much, because I think I would have been very happy to stay there when I was younger and childless, and it really was in a prime Positano location, but it was just not a great space for a family. And it definitely wasn’t a great space during a heat wave.

To add insult to injury, we could see people in pools on various balconies around us. To the kids’ credit, they were not complaining. Just hot and rightfully, wanted an easy way to cool off. Of course, every option involved taking the stairs again. We decided to walk back up and over to a nearby hotel, where we were told you could pay for a chair at their pool, but when we got there, they told us that 1) a chair was 150 Euros a piece and 2) it didn’t matter because there were no chairs left for the day.

It was too late to book a beach club, so we decided to walk down the steps to the public beach. If you haven’t been to Positano, you should know that the public beach is a very tiny sliver of the main beach, off to one side, where all the boats and ferries come in. It’s the only part of the main beach where you can swim for free, so it’s pretty crowded. There are lots of people in the water, lots of boats very close to where people are swimming and tons of daytrippers pouring off the boats right onto the pier. The other thing about Positano (and most of Italy’s beaches) is that they are all rocks, instead of sand, which we tried to explain to the kids ahead of time, but I don’t think they really understood what that would feel like until they experienced it for themselves. It hurts to walk on barefoot (the rocks are hot and pointy) and it’s even worse with Crocs (their chosen footwear) because as soon as you step into the water, your feet sink and all the holes immediately fill up with pebbles.

Mike and I had been to Positano on our own before we got married and had talked it up so much to the kids, and now we had put them in this situation, where expectation was not meeting reality for them at all. I could see them trying to enjoy it but ultimately succumbing to their true feelings, which was, “Uh Mom, Dad…I think this place sucks.”

No, they did not say that in words, but they did give up on trying to find relief on the beach. Mazzy said forget this and walked off, and Harlow had a total meltdown. I feel like she was trying to enjoy herself in the water, but she couldn’t figure out what felt worse (bare feet or Crocs) and then when she had the realization that getting from the water back off the beach would be even more difficult, because she wouldn’t have the water to help cool her down, she just lost it. I tried to pick her up and she got mad, because she hates things that make her look like a baby. But ultimately, I convinced her to let me carry her all the way across the beach to the pier, which was not easy when your own feet are sinking into the rocks too. Then she had a second meltdown when I tried to to lift her up onto the pier, because that was calling way too much attention to herself, but there was no other way and I just did it despite her protests. Mike helped lift her from on top of the pier, and I was left washing the rocks out of her shoes in the water. Mazzy eventually returned, embarrassed by the whole spectacle and then the only thing we could do was walk our dirty feet back up a gazillion steps to the room that I hated.

I WORK TOO HARD AND I AM TOO OLD FOR THIS, I thought. But also, this trip felt too important (and everything was too costly) for us not to have a good time.

When we got back to the room, I contacted my travel advisor friend Courtney (@travelwewill) who had helped me book activities and restaurants in Italy and asked her if she could help find us somewhere else to stay. Please know, she had nothing to do with booking our accommodations; Mike had done that before she got involved. Also, I know Mike has had a good track record with travel previously, and I so appreciate him always taking on that responsibility, but we all make mistakes sometimes. To his credit, he was really trying his best to keep everyone’s spirits up and make the best of everything, even though he admitted to me privately that he wasn’t that thrilled with our accommodations either.

By the end of that day, Courtney found us two different options (she was amazing and so on top of it, even though it was very hard to find anything available so last minute), but there were sacrifices that came with those choices too. 1) The cost, of course. Positano hotels are expensive, especially if you want one with a pool, and all of them required that we get a separate room for the kids, so that cost was doubled. This was the reason Mike decided to book the AirBnb in the first place. 2) The locations weren’t as ideal as our current spot.

Mike and I decided to spend the night at our AirBnb and make a decision the following day. That night, we went to an amazing restaurant that was located right across the steps from our front door. It was a fancy meal with many courses, but since the kids just got main dishes, they were done way before us. We decided to let them go back to the room on their own, while we took our time. The next morning, we walked up the stairs to a great brunch place right on top of the hill with a beautiful view and then we took the kids to a pottery lesson that Courtney had booked right across the street. We had a great time at the pottery class. Plus, it was air conditioned which was lovely. Then Mazzy and I branched off and went shopping, hitting up a place called CB Positano that sells nap dresses and quilted bags. Mazzy follows them on Instagram and was so excited to get something but couldn’t make a decision. I told her, it was so close to our place, she could think about it and we could easily go back. Then we followed the winding road with all the shops down to the beach, got lemon granitas (a Positano staple), and found the staircase at the bottom by the beach that takes us back up to our room. That path has an amazing view the entire way up with tons of cats walking up and down, veering off onto their own mini sets of stairs to their homes. The great thing about our AirBnb location was that it was equidistant to the top and the bottom of Positano, which made it relatively easy to get pretty much anywhere, in any direction.

That night we went to Tagliata for dinner (another Courtney recommendation which I would highly highly recommend) and decided to take a family vote about whether to move to a nicer hotel. Before we voted, I told my kids that although I didn’t like our current accommodations, my main concern was that they were happy and comfortable. I didn’t want them to look back on our trip to Europe with negativity because they didn’t like where we were staying. This was our first family vacation in Europe that they’ll remember (they don’t really have any memories of our trip to Copenhagen) and I want them to think back on it fondly. Mainly because I want them to be excited for future family vacations together, so maybe, just maybe, they’ll still vacation with us, even after they are old enough to travel on their own.

I got outvoted three to one to stay in our current AirBnb.

We ended up having a fantastic time in Positano. Mazzy decided to sleep on the couch in the main house because she didn’t like being in her room by herself, but Harlow liked having her own space. It was not quite as hot in the days that followed, so we made really good use of our balcony. We ate breakfast there every morning and ended every night watching the moon cast a glow on the water and the boats. One of my favorite memories of our whole trip was one night, after dinner, when Italy was playing in the Eurocup. Every time they scored, the entire city started cheering from every balcony and all the yachts started blaring their horns. We could see the whole match unfold from the reactions on the rooftops. Mazzy and I ended up going back to her store four times because it was so close, until finally, both she and I decided what to get. We also went back to the pottery place because it was just up the hill and painted more plates.

At least once a day, we’d walk to the top of the stairs (telling groaning day trippers passing by just how many steps they had left), make our way down the winding road (lemon granitas on the way), and then take the bottom staircase back to our room, saying “hi” to all the cats, in one complete Positano circle. We truly could not have been in a location that was more accessible to everything Positano had to offer.

But I also made Mike promise that if our family ever travels to a hot location again, he will never book a place without access to a pool. Going forward, I think I’ve reached a place in my life where I would choose the nice accommodations over the prime location, even if it means being a little farther from the main action.

As Mazzy said when we reached Tuscany after spending three days in Rome— “Now this feels like vacation! We live in NYC. What do we need Rome for?”

Yep. We can be the daytrippers for once.

And now I am ready to get back to our regularly scheduled programming on Instagram.