Kosher Travel with Fran and David: Tuscany with Grandchildren - Part 1

This should be a great trip.

We are now flying from Toronto to Rome via Frankfurt and will meet up with our 4 oldest grandchildren, Nava and Ariel, both 17, Kayla and Ezra, both 15, who are all flying in from Israel.

We will spend 8 days touring Tuscany and will end up with a day in Rome. The kids will fly on and we will remain for a few days in Rome.

The hope now is that when we arrive, the kids will be waiting for us. They arrive one hour before us and by googling pictures of the Rome Airport, we have designated one of the meeting places as the area where they should wait our arrival.

We made our short one hour connection in Frankfurt and when we exited the doors into the arrivals area in Rome, there were 4 smiling grandchildren waiting for us!

We headed over to the car rental facility and rented our van from Europcar. After we somehow got all the luggage loaded, we noticed that part of the front dashboard was falling apart and promptly asked for a replacement vehicle. So we unload and then reload in a new van....not the best way to start a memorable trip....hopefully everything goes smoothly from here.

We had anticipated that there would be space limitations both the first day and last day of our journey, as that would be the only time that we would have all 6 of us with all of our luggage in the van at the same time. Therefore we bought a canvas collapsible roof bag which attaches to the roof with straps and holds a few luggers.

On this the first leg of our trip, we thankfully did not need it...tho' the kids were packed into the van like sardines as we began our 3 hour journey north.

We stopped on the way to pick up some essentials and armed with our kosher Italy list, we roamed the aisles of the supermarket.

Our first stop was the little town of Pitigliano, also known as the Jerusalem of Italy. The city is built on the edge of a cliff and before entering the town, we stood across the valley and took some great pics of the amazing town.

We had given each of the kids an assignment: to choose a city that we would be visiting and to act as our tour guide. Nava had chosen Pitigliano and proceeded to educate us about the history of the place and its Jewish community. We were impressed...she came prepared with photocopies and handouts!

For several hundred years, Pitigliano was a frontier town between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and, to the south, the Papal States. When the Papal State expelled Jews from Rome, Jews fled here and re-estbalished their community as it was the closest place just outside the borders of Rome.

After the promulgation of racial laws under Nazi influence, all the Jews of the town reportedly escaped capture with the help of their Christian neighbors.

Although there are almost no Jews left in town, not enough to provide a minyan, the synagogue (1598, with furnishings of the 17th and 18th centuries) is still officiated from time to time. It was restored in 1995.

The town itself really resembles the old city of Jerusalem with its narrow alleyways and stone faced buildings. The kids enjoyed roaming around the streets as we awaited the opening of the shul and Jewish museum.

When the shul opened, we and a number of other visitors explored the old winery and matza bakery below the building.

As opposed to all our previous trips, there was no pressure on me to shoot all the pictures as we now had a professional photographer, our eldest grandchild Nava, travelling with us.

Between the two of us, we must have shot about 2500 pics on this 8 day journey. We would spend every evening comparing our shots.

We spent a little more time walking the narrow alleyways, ate lunch and then packed into the car and headed up to our Villa just outside Florence in the heart of Tuscany.

Our villa was in a huge residential estate and judging from the barn doors, our unit must have been the stables at one time. There were two bedrooms (Fran and I in one and the girls in the other) and 2 pullout couches in the living room for the boys. It was quaint and ideal for the six of us. We set up shop and proceeded to prepare the first of many meals.

The next morning was Shiva Asar B'Tammuz and as we would all be fasting, we decided to head out and spend the morning in the market in Florence, return to the villa and relax the rest of the day.