Dad's Unsupervised Week

Five days of me and the girls doing our own thing in Tuscany. What could possibly go wrong? Fortunately for all involved there was a pool at our villa and a playground just down the street so during the days there wasn't much trouble to get into.

Of course we did have to find lunch every day which meant a trip into Lucca for some Pizza Margherita.

Which invariably lead to gelato.

We did make a trip into Vinci midway through the week to see the home of Leonard! The girls were pretty well done with museum's at this point but we were so close I felt it would still be worthwhile. Even if they didn't grasp the importance of Leonardo. Most of what they have at the museum dedicated to Leonardo are replicas of his work and none of the sights are very big so we managed to work our way through most of the site in about two hours.

I think the girls preferred the views from the town more than the engineering and artistic works.

But the drive home was quieter than the trip there so we must have done something right.

And the rest of the afternoon was rather quiet as well.

Ultimately most of the mischief that took place during my week with the kids occurred after their mother got off work. It started on Tuesday when we got to visit a local Tuscan family for a traditional dinner with hand made pasta. The girls of course loved the opportunity to really dig in and use their hands to make our dinner.

Olivia took it a step beyond dinner and decided to try her hand at photography as well.

I see a suspicious paw patrol shoe

The downside of the girls being so enthusiastic about making dinner was I ate way too much! But our host family was absolutely lovely and I would highly recommend this for anyone interested in staying in Tuscany.

A few nights later we decided to try our hand at team cycling along the great wall of Lucca. Renting a multi seat bike is a very popular excursion when visiting the walled city and it really was quite fun. We simply walked up to a bike rental shop in the evening, requested a four seater and after a 2 minute instructional/safety talk we were on our way.

Ready for our adventure!

Hey, eyes on the road!

Apparently "steering" a bike is tiring work

On our last day in Lucca we visited the local aqueduct. While no longer in operation their is a nice walkway that that runs alongside.

There's not much to see there at the moment but the "pump house" is currently being renovated and in a few years will be an interesting monument for people to visit.

And with that our time in Tuscany came to a close. We had an amazing three weeks managing to achieve all of our goals (most importantly pizza and gelato every day), visiting beautiful hilltop and seaside towns and eating wonderful meals. Can't wait to return!