April 15, 2026 • 27 mins
Episode Title: Episode 30: How Do We Do Worldschooling in Italy?
Hosts: Astrid & Clint, creators of The Wandering Daughter
(Intro clip sourced from 12:38 — Astrid and Clint describing the 600-year-old farmhouse near Parma, complete with a pizza oven, champagne grapes, and a stone cottage kitchen)
Italy might just be the most approachable European destination for worldschooling families — and in this episode, Astrid and Clint make the case for why. They answer the question: how do I world school in Italy?
They start with the logistics. Italy is larger and more geographically diverse than most people expect: the Italian Alps in the north are a different world from the Mediterranean south. Astrid and Clint flew into Rome and traveled north, spending the heart of their trip in the Parma countryside. They cover Schengen zone rules (90 days in, 90 out), the ease of entry for US and Canadian passport holders, how much English is spoken, and why a little Spanish can go a long way. On getting around: they praise driving in Italy — same side of the road as the US, beautiful scenery, very similar traffic laws — while flagging the need to watch speed limits and pedestrian-only zones. Trains and discount buses are options, though Astrid shares a hard-won lesson about a seven-hour highway layover on a budget coach.
The centerpiece of the episode is their time in the Parma region — and it's a compelling argument for basing a family outside the major tourist cities. They rented a 600-year-old stone farmhouse with vineyards, a pizza oven, and champagne grapes growing in the pergola, for roughly $1,100 USD per month. From there, they explored a remarkable series of small food museums — dedicated to ham, cheese, sausage, tomatoes, wine, and more — each in a different village within about 20 miles. The cheese museum led them to visit a working Parmigiano-Reggiano dairy, where they watched the full cheese-making process from milk to massive aging wheels. Astrid notes they prepped the kids by watching a TED-Ed video on cheese-making beforehand, giving them context that made the visit land.
History and art are woven throughout the episode. Clint, a former art major, describes the Sistine Chapel and the Hall of Statues in Rome with genuine awe. They recommend the double-decker bus tour as an underrated way to get oriented in a new city — low-key, relaxing, and great for kids. In Venice, they used Macco Tours for a kid-friendly scavenger hunt centered on the Doge's Palace, a format that kept the kids engaged while still delivering real historical content. And Milan earns its own mention as an architectural beauty — though Clint admits with some regret that Florence, just a short drive from where they were staying, didn't make the itinerary this trip.
The episode also touches on a few harder moments. Italy was the first country in their travels where Astrid experienced overt racial hostility — men making mocking remarks on the street directed at her as an Indonesian woman. Clint and Astrid address it honestly: it was jarring, it was real, and it would not have happened to a white traveler. They note that immigration politics in certain parts of Italy — particularly attitudes toward Filipino and Southeast Asian communities — provided some context, though it doesn't overshadow what was otherwise an extraordinary trip.
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📋 Episode Chapters: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:00:21 – Welcome to Worldschooling Q&A 00:01:15 – Today's Question: How Do I World School in Italy? 00:01:38
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(00:00):
It was gorgeous.
Yeah, it had a pizza oven.
Pizza oven, super cutecottage kitchen. The sunset.
There was champagne grapes growing in a
little pergola.
Stone house. Incredible.
(00:21):
This is world schooling q and a. I'mAstrid, creator of the wandering daughter.
As a traveling family,
we've spent four years travelingfull-time to over 18 countries and six
continents. Wherever we go,
we try to learn as much as we can aboutthe countries and cultures we visit.
While we didn't coin the term, welike to call this world schooling,
(00:43):
using the world as our classroom.
Each week my husband Clint and I willanswer one question about world schooling
and share our experiences of travelingthe world with our kids Ready to get
started? Great. Let's dive in.
(01:06):
So we're continuing withour country deep dives,
and this week we are answering thequestion, how do I world school in Italy?
So Ashton, how do weworld school in Italy?
Italy's a great country.
It's a popular country to visit.
I think it gets a lot ofvisitors just in general,
one of the top Europeancountries probably. Yeah, for.
(01:28):
Sure.
But I think that there's a lotof good things about it too.
A lot of the opportunities forlearning for families when they go
visit.
Yeah, I think there's aninteresting, I wouldn't say stigma,
but there's an interestingdivide in the world,
going world where there are manyfamilies who kind of avoid Europe
(01:49):
and go only to by an American countriesor Southeast Asia or something.
A lot of that has todo with affordability.
And then there is a large group ofpeople that like to go to Europe.
I think Europe is also traditionallyin common here in the United States as
destinations for vacations.
Because.
It safe for comfortable,whatever the case might be.
(02:12):
I think maybe when wefirst started traveling,
we were a little bit hesitant aboutEurope for affordability reasons.
We're also,
I think we tend to lean towards notfocusing and not being so Eurocentric
for a number of reasons. Havingsaid that, Italy was awesome.
Yeah, it was. Yeah. So let's coversome of the logistics of traveling.
(02:33):
Here. Yeah. All right. So just likewe've done in the other episodes,
Italy's a fairly large country, largerthan I think you may think it is.
It seems small, I think, but it'sactually a fairly large country.
It's quite a span too when you talkabout the north end to the south
end. So if you're down on thesouth end, like Sicily for example,
(02:55):
it's very Mediterranean, it'smuch different climate than,
say if you're in the north endwhere you're more in the Alps.
So it's incredibly diverse asfar as landscape and geography,
and that also translates todiversity in food and people and all
sorts of things. We spentmost of our time in Northern,
(03:16):
so we flew into Rome andthen went north from there.
And so we experienced most of that.
Our Mediterranean days were in a laterepisode when we spent time in Spain,
but chances are you'll fly into Rome andthere's other places you can fly into.
You.
Fly into Milan, fly.
Into Milan.
I think we actually Northend, didn't we? Oh no.
We flew into Rome and thenwe drove over to Milan.
(03:39):
And we had our oldest son came andmet us and flew into, flew Milan.
Flew into Milan.
So we flew into Rome, spent some timein Rome and then went north from there.
I think logistics wise,
it's like a lot of the European countries,
it's very easy forUnited States citizens or
(04:00):
Canadians to travel to.
It's part of the Xian countries.So if you want to go there,
you'll have the maximum amount oftime in any of the shian countries is
three months. So keep that in mind.
You could spend your whole threemonths in Italy or just a month,
and then the remaining twomonths elsewhere. When.
We say three months,it's 90 days. Exactly.
(04:22):
That's true. 90 days. And then youhave 90 days that you can't be in,
and yet the Shen countriesand then you can come back.
And I think there's no visa that youneed if you're coming from the United
States or Canada. I believealso, there's no visa.
You need to actually come into Italy.
Many parts of Italy have tourism,
(04:44):
so unless you're goingto really small towns,
most of Italy has touristcentric, so there's lots to do.
It's easy to travel. It is stilllargely now, this has changed.
When I first went to Oli back in 2008,
that was not as much Englishspoken when I went there,
but when we went there as a family,
(05:07):
there's actually considerableamount of English spoken now.
But still,
there are still places where you'rejust going to need to learn a few
phrases in Italian because they're notgoing to be able to speak to you in
English.
And this is a good moment to recognize.
We love to learn as muchlanguages as possible. Italy,
(05:29):
we tried to learn a little bit just likephrases, numbers, that kind of stuff.
Italian's one of those things where tous doesn't seem like a practical language
to learn.
Sorry, Italians.
We love Italian. It's absolutelybeautiful language. It's just when a band.
There's only one country that speaks it.
And you speak it very well. It'sincredible. But yeah, so I mean,
(05:50):
Italian is the language thatis spoken there. Some English,
I think most tourists that go thereare not going to speak Italian.
So the Italians are good atunderstanding other languages though.
So Spanish for example, we do speaksome Spanish. Our very first experience,
the taxi driver spoke to usin Spanish, which was awesome.
(06:11):
So we were able to communicate that way.
He couldn't speak English, buthe could speak Spanish. So.
Rome is a pretty easy airport to flyinto. You actually when you land,
you don't get bombarded. I think witha lot of, at least when we were there,
you don't get bombarded with a lot ofpeople trying to buy for your attention.
So that was kind of nice. And then otherlogistics, they are Euro based there,
(06:33):
at least when we were there,they were still Euro based.
I think they're still Eurobased. Now. Having said that,
it's very easy to getaround without cash there.
You can pay with card.
Except maybe when you getin the smaller towns. We.
Notice.
It was more like some of the smallercafes and stuff, or cash based.
It's.
Not as, there are other Europeancities that we'll talk about,
(06:55):
or UK cities that are much moreadvanced as far as cash versus non-cash.
But I think Italy was similar us,
I think mostly creditcard based or card based,
but some cash can help from here to there.
In terms of getting around.There's trains you can take.
We took the train from Rome to Milan,
(07:17):
and then there are also buses.We took a bus from, where was it?
Was it from Milan out of Italy to France.
You just have to be wary that thisparticular bus we took had a seven hour
transfer, but it was onthe side of a highway,
so we just sat in the side of thehighway at the bus stop for seven hours.
(07:39):
Not fun. So just
if you're taking those discountbuses, just kind of be aware of
transfers and how longand things like that.
Yeah, very true.
And then you can also rent a car.
We covered our experience driving inItaly in a previous car rental episode.
But just to say that if youare going to rent a car,
(08:01):
be wary of the speed limitsand areas where it's pedestrian
only.
Because.
You will get ticketed.
Having said that though, driving in Italyfrom the United States, pretty easy.
Very similar road rules.
I think they drive on theright side of the street.
Yeah, it's the same side of the road,side of the road, left side of the car.
So it's the same as the UnitedStates, so there's no changes there.
(08:26):
The traffic laws are very similar.Just you need to know the speed limits.
I think that's the one tricky thing.The country is beautiful to drive in.
Absolutely incredible to drive in.
And.
Just I think one of the most enjoyable
driving experiences.
Yeah, very picturesque.
Yeah, just everywhere. Very picturesque.
(08:48):
We were in the Italian Alpsfor a bit, and then a lot of.
The Parma region, the.
Parma region.
And then one thing in terms of lodging,hotels are there, Airbnbs are there,
and then there are thesethings called gro laws,
which are like farmstays that you can book.
So we didn't end up getting todo that while we were in Italy,
(09:11):
but we saw a lot of that whenwe were in the Parma region,
and I think that would be somethingwe could consider when we go back to
Italy in the future.
Italy is also going throughthis interesting transition where they're really
trying to bring in digital nomads orforeigners to help buy and restore
property. So there are opportunitiesfor families to have longer
(09:35):
living opportunities there.
We're not going to cover thatin any of our podcast episodes.
Not really where we are,
but we do know this is oneof the countries that are openly inviting people to
try to come live there.
In fact,
there is one program that's specific fordigital nomads where they go and they
stay,
(09:56):
the Italian government will give astipend for you to stay in a village,
work there,
and also teach locals some skills
so that they can be remoteworkers as well. Yeah.
The diversity makeup of Italy, we talkabout this in the previous two episodes,
(10:18):
it's somewhat diverse.
I think it's diverse in cultures ingeneral, like that. I don't know.
I guess it's pretty diverse as far aspeople and backgrounds and things like
that. I don't.
I don't know if I can speak to thediversity. I think that there is also,
I don't know, nationalpride in being Italian.
(10:39):
And so somebody that is anoutsider will always be,
or it seems like from our point of viewas travelers will always be seen as
outsiders.
Yeah, I think we're alittle sensitive about this.
This was the first country in our world'sgoing travels that we actually got a
little bit of.
Yeah, it was likemicroaggressions in a way,
(11:02):
but definitely racially charged.
I think we had somegentlemen on the bus kind
of comment about us yelling,yelling at us about being Filipino.
And I remember walking through a square,
walking by a restaurant,
and there was this mansitting at a restaurant and he
(11:27):
started yelling, made upAsian sounding things like,
oh, whatever. Veryblatantly of, we apologize.
If that sounds.
Yes, it was awful.
But he was saying that ashe was looking at me walking
by, and it's like, I can brush it off.
(11:47):
But it definitely wassomething that is like,
I would not have gottenthat if I was white.
And for those of you that arenot watching this on YouTube,
and you're actually listening to,we are an Asian-American family,
Astrid is Indonesian.
And so we also knew that there was somecontext in OU where there were some,
(12:08):
especially against Filipinos, therewere some animosity towards immigration.
And so anyways,
we only want to mention that becauseit was the first time that we ever felt
like that in any of ourtravels to this point.
But.
Beyond that, it was just a coupleincidents. Everything else was amazing.
I mean, we really enjoyed our time.
(12:30):
In Italy. So let's go throughsome of the highlights then.
What would be something that a worldschooler would enjoy about visiting Italy?
Well, let me just say, I wouldn'teven say if you're lucky enough,
because it's pretty easy tofind these accommodations.
We found a 6-year-old six,
not six year, 600 year old.
(12:52):
Farmhouse.
Farmhouse in a small familyowned villa that was right
on the countryside near Parma.There's vineyards around.
It was incrediblyidyllic. It was gorgeous.
Yeah. It had a pizza oven.
Pizza oven, super cutecottage kitchen. The sunset.
(13:16):
Right there was champagnegrapes growing in
a little pergola. Yeah.
Stone house. Incredible. So I mean,
one thing I think, and we've knownseveral worlds going families,
that Italy is a popular spot becauseyou can find these countryside
estate, these countrysidelodgings for fairly cheap. I mean,
(13:40):
I think at the time we paidroughly 1100 for the month,
which in context, andthat's 1100 US dollars.
For three bedroom.
For this three bedroom house.
That's almost a third of somepeople's rent here in Seattle.
So that is incredibly low for what we got,
(14:03):
and we're not the only family,
lots of families to go toItaly for this very reason.
To add additionally to that,
before you get into some of the othercultural and history and that kind of
stuff, the cost of livingwas fairly really affordable.
I think this was one of thesurprises I think we had in Europe
in general and Italy specifically,
(14:24):
is that we were staying about 45 minutesoutside of Parma and the countryside
and grocery shopping.
The little cafes nearby us wereincredibly affordable buying
charcuterie for a year.
That's true. Yeah.
Fresh.
Pasta.
From the grocery stores,that kind of stuff.
Yeah, it's like outside of thebig cities. It was affordable.
(14:47):
So if you're going to be in Romespending most of your time in Rome,
obviously it's going to be moreexpensive. And Venice as well,
because Venice is justpriced for tourists.
Also, if you're going out to restaurants,
it's like proper sit down restaurantsis going to be expensive. But I mean,
we love cooking. It was one ofthe places we place to cook.
(15:09):
We loved Cook.
And that's where welearned how to make pasta.
So we were rolling our own pasta, making.
Our own pizzas. Great.Yeah. So what about you?
What are some highlights for you?
So what I loved about I,
I'm kind of a history geek, butI don't memorize history facts.
(15:30):
I just love the idea that all of these,
there were these fascinatingcultures that existed before
so many years ago, andItaly is just so old.
I mean, I think you were, was it Rome?
I don't know. Rome isthousands of years old,
(15:54):
and we're walking through this city, and
it blows my mind as somebody whogrew up in a country that maybe
the oldest building isseveral hundred years old.
It was just mind boggling to meto be walking in the coliseum and
this building that was thousandsof years old and still standing
(16:17):
and just,
so that is one highlight isjust the amount of history,
like Roman history you can learn about,
and then just getting andexperiencing some of that in Venice,
we did a tour with thiscompany called Macco Tours,
and they do great kid focused,but still educational,
(16:40):
like scavenger hunts.
And so we did one aboutcentered around the Doge in
Venice,
and then we went and followed our guidewas also the one that was helping us
go through the scavenger hunt,
and she would give us brief little factsand then do activities with the kids
and things like that. Oh yeah, it's great.
(17:03):
Yeah, it was incredible. I think it'salso good to mention one of our tips,
we did this in Mexico City too,
but one of our tips for getting acquaintedto a city when we were in Rome is
we'll actually buy theDouble Decker tour bus.
It sounds super cheesy and super touristy,
but it is a great easy way when youfirst get in a place to get your
(17:25):
bearings, to understand.
The.
Lay of the land, kind of see ahighlight and overview of everything.
And it's not intense. It's relaxing.The kids can relax and stuff.
So we did that in Rome as well,and it was really nice to get that.
You're right, the historythere, it's incredible. I mean,
you're just immersed in it.
You're walking down the street and there'san apartment building that's 30 years
(17:47):
old.
And.
Right next to it
is a partial wall that'sbeen there for 2000 years.
It's just incredible. Yeah. Yeah.So beyond the history though,
I think this is a populartopic of ours, the food.
Yes. Good.
I mean, everyone talks aboutItalian food. Yes. Eat, pray, love.
That was a major focus. Italian food,
(18:10):
no one's a stranger to theromance and the passion towards
Italian food. There's a reasonfor that. I mean, it's incredible.
And being in Italy, we ate allsorts of places, like said,
grocery stores are really incredible,
buy fresh pastas forreally affordable prices,
hanging charcuteries, that kind ofstuff. It's amazing. Great cheese.
(18:35):
But what are some of thehighlights of the food.
I would say?
So we stayed in this farmhouseabout 45 minutes outside of
Parma,
and probably around 10 minutes fromwhere we were staying up in the hills
was this Ria, like afamily owned restaurant.
And I found it on the maplike Google Maps and like, oh,
(18:58):
let's go eat here. And weshow up and it's just a lady's
backyard that she is sort of turned intoa restaurant and we come over and we're
looking at the menu and we don't speakItalian. And she didn't really speak,
I don't think she spoke Englishat all. She spoke English.
So we were kind of miming like,well, what do you recommend?
(19:19):
And so she was pointing to this andshe's kind of trying to explain it,
but I loved listening to her talking.
She was so genuinely nice too. Shejust was like, this, just warm.
But the food was beautiful,and just the setting,
we were sitting in thistape outdoor seating area,
and the sun was setting and looking.
(19:41):
Out.
For.
Mountain.
Forest.
I think another thing you want totalk about the food museums in Parma?
Yeah.
So what's amazing is we get backto kind of the educational side of
what's going both scienceand history and culture
mixes with food in Italy. I mean,
(20:01):
because food is such a huge partof Italian history that There
are in the area we were stayingin is there's these series of,
I think it's five museums, fivefood museums. I don't know how many,
it might be seven. Yeah, maybe seven.
But there's a series of these smallmuseums really no bigger than a house.
(20:21):
They're really small museums,
but they're all centered aroundvery specific types of food.
So one was a sausage museum, one was awine museum. That one was in a castle,
I believe. There was a cheesemuseum, a tomato museum,
I think an artichoke museum. Aham museum. Ham museum museum.
So they're all one focus andthey're all in different towns too.
(20:42):
So what was incredible, allwithin the Parma region,
so all within 20 miles of eachother, and we think roughly,
so we had a car, so we got to go.
And because we were there forover a month or for a month,
we just spread out our time.
We would go to one museum a day overthe course of a week or a couple weeks,
(21:03):
and they were incredible.
We got to go to these new towns that weprobably wouldn't have seen or gone to
in general.And then you get there,
and some places had samplesand some places didn't.
The Tomato Museum obviouslydidn't have samples of tomatoes,
but it was really cool to learn aboutthe history of tomatoes that came from
the Americas. But.
(21:25):
Yeah, well, I meanthat's another thing too.
It's like you see theeffects of colonialism,
globalization and how that hashugely influenced and impacted
Italian cuisine. Yeah.
We and the tomatoes and stuff. Anyways,
so that was incredible.
(21:45):
And then the other kind of foodmuseum thing that I would say was we
visited dairy in Parma. So Parma, ofcourse, is known for Parmesan cheese.
I mean, that's one of thethings that it's known for.
And.
Parmesan cheese comes fromthat region of the world.
And so we went to a dairy.
There.
(22:05):
And learned about how they make Parmesan.
We watched
the whole process ofcheese making from just the
mixing of the milk or the heating.
And then we went into the storagewhere they were storing these
shelves piled high withParmesan cheese wheels.
(22:28):
These huge Parmesan cheese wheels.Yeah, it was incredible. That was great.
That's a great example of, Imean, that was a science bit.
Yeah. Because in fact, before we did that,
before we went on that visit,
we watched a Ted Ed video about how cheese
(22:48):
is made or what wasthe history of cheeses,
so that the kids kind of had a little bitof already some context going into it.
And they spoke specifically aboutwhy Parmesan cheese is specific
to that region and stuff. Sothose were great. What else?
What are some highlights?
I think Italy is alsoa great place for art.
(23:11):
We did a fun little art activity,like a mosaic art activity.
We were learning about, the kidsand I were during our down days,
learning about Roman culture and stuff.
And so we tried to do our ownmosaics with magazines and things
like that.
But then we'd go to thecastles and we'd see the
(23:33):
artwork there or things like that.
Well, and then just Milan in general,
Milan is like this architectural haven.I mean, it's absolutely beautiful.
And of course, it's like one ofthe fashion staples of Europe.
It is beautiful. It might be blasphemous,
(23:55):
but we did not make it to Florence.
I was an art major and I should havepushed for us to go to Florence.
Many people have many worldgoing. Families have been like,
you did not go to Florence. Yeah.
Why were you in par?
We were so close Florence. So somedaywe'll make it there. But yeah, I mean,
Florence is a huge impact. We went tothe Sistine Chapel when we were in pro.
(24:18):
And.
Obviously the Michelangelo,
but we also saw Raphaeland the Hall of Statues,
and it is just mean forany art lover or history.
It's such a centerpiece forclassical art. So it's incredible.
Speaking of museums, thisis not an art museum,
(24:39):
but a very cool little bit quirky museumthat we went to when we were there
is Vol Landia, whichis, it's just outside.
It's actually at the Milan airportand is just like an airplane museum.
But it was really cool for the kids to go,
and we got to walkthrough an old airplane,
some old airplanes and stuff. And thenthere were some cars too that were there.
(25:04):
So yeah.
That's a great treat,
especially if you fly into Milan orsomething and you're just kind of in that
area near the airport, I believe.
Yeah, it's right next to the airport.
Yeah.
The only thing I want to mention alsois we also spent some time in Trento,
and I highly recommend getting tothe Italian Alps if you get a chance.
(25:25):
Stunning. I mean, I grew up inColorado here in the United States.
The Rockies are also absolutely stunning,
and I was blown away by just thesheer altitude and just beauty of
the Alps. And Trento is just this,
it's very similar to what's thetown that supposedly Romeo and
Juliet's based out of?
(25:47):
Verona.
Verona.
So it's just this gorgeousmountain town that has these Old
Castle structures. It was just incredible.
And there's a little bit ofGerman influence to some of it,
some of the food and someof the architecture too.
So that was pretty cool.
But we loved Italy.
(26:08):
Yeah.
Absolutely loved it.
You can read about some of the placesthat we visited in Italy on the blog
I wrote about Parma.
I wrote about the VolyaAirport Museum and also Trento.
Yeah, very cool.
Yes. So anything else to add?
I don't think so.
All right. Well, that's all for today.
(26:31):
Thank you for joining us on this episodeof World Schooling q and a with Astrid
and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notes forany links we mentioned in the episode
and visit my website,
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(27:35):
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Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
It was gorgeous.
Yeah, it had a pizza oven.
Pizza oven, super cutecottage kitchen. The sunset.
There was champagne grapes growing in a
little pergola.
Stone house. Incredible.
(00:21):
This is world schooling q and a. I'mAstrid, creator of the wandering daughter.
As a traveling family,
we've spent four years travelingfull-time to over 18 countries and six
continents. Wherever we go,
we try to learn as much as we can aboutthe countries and cultures we visit.
While we didn't coin the term, welike to call this world schooling,
(00:43):
using the world as our classroom.
Each week my husband Clint and I willanswer one question about world schooling
and share our experiences of travelingthe world with our kids Ready to get
started? Great. Let's dive in.
(01:06):
So we're continuing withour country deep dives,
and this week we are answering thequestion, how do I world school in Italy?
So Ashton, how do weworld school in Italy?
Italy's a great country.
It's a popular country to visit.
I think it gets a lot ofvisitors just in general,
one of the top Europeancountries probably. Yeah, for.
(01:28):
Sure.
But I think that there's a lotof good things about it too.
A lot of the opportunities forlearning for families when they go
visit.
Yeah, I think there's aninteresting, I wouldn't say stigma,
but there's an interestingdivide in the world,
going world where there are manyfamilies who kind of avoid Europe
(01:49):
and go only to by an American countriesor Southeast Asia or something.
A lot of that has todo with affordability.
And then there is a large group ofpeople that like to go to Europe.
I think Europe is also traditionallyin common here in the United States as
destinations for vacations.
Because.
It safe for comfortable,whatever the case might be.
(02:12):
I think maybe when wefirst started traveling,
we were a little bit hesitant aboutEurope for affordability reasons.
We're also,
I think we tend to lean towards notfocusing and not being so Eurocentric
for a number of reasons. Havingsaid that, Italy was awesome.
Yeah, it was. Yeah. So let's coversome of the logistics of traveling.
(02:33):
Here. Yeah. All right. So just likewe've done in the other episodes,
Italy's a fairly large country, largerthan I think you may think it is.
It seems small, I think, but it'sactually a fairly large country.
It's quite a span too when you talkabout the north end to the south
end. So if you're down on thesouth end, like Sicily for example,
(02:55):
it's very Mediterranean, it'smuch different climate than,
say if you're in the north endwhere you're more in the Alps.
So it's incredibly diverse asfar as landscape and geography,
and that also translates todiversity in food and people and all
sorts of things. We spentmost of our time in Northern,
(03:16):
so we flew into Rome andthen went north from there.
And so we experienced most of that.
Our Mediterranean days were in a laterepisode when we spent time in Spain,
but chances are you'll fly into Rome andthere's other places you can fly into.
You.
Fly into Milan, fly.
Into Milan.
I think we actually Northend, didn't we? Oh no.
We flew into Rome and thenwe drove over to Milan.
(03:39):
And we had our oldest son came andmet us and flew into, flew Milan.
Flew into Milan.
So we flew into Rome, spent some timein Rome and then went north from there.
I think logistics wise,
it's like a lot of the European countries,
it's very easy forUnited States citizens or
(04:00):
Canadians to travel to.
It's part of the Xian countries.So if you want to go there,
you'll have the maximum amount oftime in any of the shian countries is
three months. So keep that in mind.
You could spend your whole threemonths in Italy or just a month,
and then the remaining twomonths elsewhere. When.
We say three months,it's 90 days. Exactly.
(04:22):
That's true. 90 days. And then youhave 90 days that you can't be in,
and yet the Shen countriesand then you can come back.
And I think there's no visa that youneed if you're coming from the United
States or Canada. I believealso, there's no visa.
You need to actually come into Italy.
Many parts of Italy have tourism,
(04:44):
so unless you're goingto really small towns,
most of Italy has touristcentric, so there's lots to do.
It's easy to travel. It is stilllargely now, this has changed.
When I first went to Oli back in 2008,
that was not as much Englishspoken when I went there,
but when we went there as a family,
(05:07):
there's actually considerableamount of English spoken now.
But still,
there are still places where you'rejust going to need to learn a few
phrases in Italian because they're notgoing to be able to speak to you in
English.
And this is a good moment to recognize.
We love to learn as muchlanguages as possible. Italy,
(05:29):
we tried to learn a little bit just likephrases, numbers, that kind of stuff.
Italian's one of those things where tous doesn't seem like a practical language
to learn.
Sorry, Italians.
We love Italian. It's absolutelybeautiful language. It's just when a band.
There's only one country that speaks it.
And you speak it very well. It'sincredible. But yeah, so I mean,
(05:50):
Italian is the language thatis spoken there. Some English,
I think most tourists that go thereare not going to speak Italian.
So the Italians are good atunderstanding other languages though.
So Spanish for example, we do speaksome Spanish. Our very first experience,
the taxi driver spoke to usin Spanish, which was awesome.
(06:11):
So we were able to communicate that way.
He couldn't speak English, buthe could speak Spanish. So.
Rome is a pretty easy airport to flyinto. You actually when you land,
you don't get bombarded. I think witha lot of, at least when we were there,
you don't get bombarded with a lot ofpeople trying to buy for your attention.
So that was kind of nice. And then otherlogistics, they are Euro based there,
(06:33):
at least when we were there,they were still Euro based.
I think they're still Eurobased. Now. Having said that,
it's very easy to getaround without cash there.
You can pay with card.
Except maybe when you getin the smaller towns. We.
Notice.
It was more like some of the smallercafes and stuff, or cash based.
It's.
Not as, there are other Europeancities that we'll talk about,
(06:55):
or UK cities that are much moreadvanced as far as cash versus non-cash.
But I think Italy was similar us,
I think mostly creditcard based or card based,
but some cash can help from here to there.
In terms of getting around.There's trains you can take.
We took the train from Rome to Milan,
(07:17):
and then there are also buses.We took a bus from, where was it?
Was it from Milan out of Italy to France.
You just have to be wary that thisparticular bus we took had a seven hour
transfer, but it was onthe side of a highway,
so we just sat in the side of thehighway at the bus stop for seven hours.
(07:39):
Not fun. So just
if you're taking those discountbuses, just kind of be aware of
transfers and how longand things like that.
Yeah, very true.
And then you can also rent a car.
We covered our experience driving inItaly in a previous car rental episode.
But just to say that if youare going to rent a car,
(08:01):
be wary of the speed limitsand areas where it's pedestrian
only.
Because.
You will get ticketed.
Having said that though, driving in Italyfrom the United States, pretty easy.
Very similar road rules.
I think they drive on theright side of the street.
Yeah, it's the same side of the road,side of the road, left side of the car.
So it's the same as the UnitedStates, so there's no changes there.
(08:26):
The traffic laws are very similar.Just you need to know the speed limits.
I think that's the one tricky thing.The country is beautiful to drive in.
Absolutely incredible to drive in.
And.
Just I think one of the most enjoyable
driving experiences.
Yeah, very picturesque.
Yeah, just everywhere. Very picturesque.
(08:48):
We were in the Italian Alpsfor a bit, and then a lot of.
The Parma region, the.
Parma region.
And then one thing in terms of lodging,hotels are there, Airbnbs are there,
and then there are thesethings called gro laws,
which are like farmstays that you can book.
So we didn't end up getting todo that while we were in Italy,
(09:11):
but we saw a lot of that whenwe were in the Parma region,
and I think that would be somethingwe could consider when we go back to
Italy in the future.
Italy is also going throughthis interesting transition where they're really
trying to bring in digital nomads orforeigners to help buy and restore
property. So there are opportunitiesfor families to have longer
(09:35):
living opportunities there.
We're not going to cover thatin any of our podcast episodes.
Not really where we are,
but we do know this is oneof the countries that are openly inviting people to
try to come live there.
In fact,
there is one program that's specific fordigital nomads where they go and they
stay,
(09:56):
the Italian government will give astipend for you to stay in a village,
work there,
and also teach locals some skills
so that they can be remoteworkers as well. Yeah.
The diversity makeup of Italy, we talkabout this in the previous two episodes,
(10:18):
it's somewhat diverse.
I think it's diverse in cultures ingeneral, like that. I don't know.
I guess it's pretty diverse as far aspeople and backgrounds and things like
that. I don't.
I don't know if I can speak to thediversity. I think that there is also,
I don't know, nationalpride in being Italian.
(10:39):
And so somebody that is anoutsider will always be,
or it seems like from our point of viewas travelers will always be seen as
outsiders.
Yeah, I think we're alittle sensitive about this.
This was the first country in our world'sgoing travels that we actually got a
little bit of.
Yeah, it was likemicroaggressions in a way,
(11:02):
but definitely racially charged.
I think we had somegentlemen on the bus kind
of comment about us yelling,yelling at us about being Filipino.
And I remember walking through a square,
walking by a restaurant,
and there was this mansitting at a restaurant and he
(11:27):
started yelling, made upAsian sounding things like,
oh, whatever. Veryblatantly of, we apologize.
If that sounds.
Yes, it was awful.
But he was saying that ashe was looking at me walking
by, and it's like, I can brush it off.
(11:47):
But it definitely wassomething that is like,
I would not have gottenthat if I was white.
And for those of you that arenot watching this on YouTube,
and you're actually listening to,we are an Asian-American family,
Astrid is Indonesian.
And so we also knew that there was somecontext in OU where there were some,
(12:08):
especially against Filipinos, therewere some animosity towards immigration.
And so anyways,
we only want to mention that becauseit was the first time that we ever felt
like that in any of ourtravels to this point.
But.
Beyond that, it was just a coupleincidents. Everything else was amazing.
I mean, we really enjoyed our time.
(12:30):
In Italy. So let's go throughsome of the highlights then.
What would be something that a worldschooler would enjoy about visiting Italy?
Well, let me just say, I wouldn'teven say if you're lucky enough,
because it's pretty easy tofind these accommodations.
We found a 6-year-old six,
not six year, 600 year old.
(12:52):
Farmhouse.
Farmhouse in a small familyowned villa that was right
on the countryside near Parma.There's vineyards around.
It was incrediblyidyllic. It was gorgeous.
Yeah. It had a pizza oven.
Pizza oven, super cutecottage kitchen. The sunset.
(13:16):
Right there was champagnegrapes growing in
a little pergola. Yeah.
Stone house. Incredible. So I mean,
one thing I think, and we've knownseveral worlds going families,
that Italy is a popular spot becauseyou can find these countryside
estate, these countrysidelodgings for fairly cheap. I mean,
(13:40):
I think at the time we paidroughly 1100 for the month,
which in context, andthat's 1100 US dollars.
For three bedroom.
For this three bedroom house.
That's almost a third of somepeople's rent here in Seattle.
So that is incredibly low for what we got,
(14:03):
and we're not the only family,
lots of families to go toItaly for this very reason.
To add additionally to that,
before you get into some of the othercultural and history and that kind of
stuff, the cost of livingwas fairly really affordable.
I think this was one of thesurprises I think we had in Europe
in general and Italy specifically,
(14:24):
is that we were staying about 45 minutesoutside of Parma and the countryside
and grocery shopping.
The little cafes nearby us wereincredibly affordable buying
charcuterie for a year.
That's true. Yeah.
Fresh.
Pasta.
From the grocery stores,that kind of stuff.
Yeah, it's like outside of thebig cities. It was affordable.
(14:47):
So if you're going to be in Romespending most of your time in Rome,
obviously it's going to be moreexpensive. And Venice as well,
because Venice is justpriced for tourists.
Also, if you're going out to restaurants,
it's like proper sit down restaurantsis going to be expensive. But I mean,
we love cooking. It was one ofthe places we place to cook.
(15:09):
We loved Cook.
And that's where welearned how to make pasta.
So we were rolling our own pasta, making.
Our own pizzas. Great.Yeah. So what about you?
What are some highlights for you?
So what I loved about I,
I'm kind of a history geek, butI don't memorize history facts.
(15:30):
I just love the idea that all of these,
there were these fascinatingcultures that existed before
so many years ago, andItaly is just so old.
I mean, I think you were, was it Rome?
I don't know. Rome isthousands of years old,
(15:54):
and we're walking through this city, and
it blows my mind as somebody whogrew up in a country that maybe
the oldest building isseveral hundred years old.
It was just mind boggling to meto be walking in the coliseum and
this building that was thousandsof years old and still standing
(16:17):
and just,
so that is one highlight isjust the amount of history,
like Roman history you can learn about,
and then just getting andexperiencing some of that in Venice,
we did a tour with thiscompany called Macco Tours,
and they do great kid focused,but still educational,
(16:40):
like scavenger hunts.
And so we did one aboutcentered around the Doge in
Venice,
and then we went and followed our guidewas also the one that was helping us
go through the scavenger hunt,
and she would give us brief little factsand then do activities with the kids
and things like that. Oh yeah, it's great.
(17:03):
Yeah, it was incredible. I think it'salso good to mention one of our tips,
we did this in Mexico City too,
but one of our tips for getting acquaintedto a city when we were in Rome is
we'll actually buy theDouble Decker tour bus.
It sounds super cheesy and super touristy,
but it is a great easy way when youfirst get in a place to get your
(17:25):
bearings, to understand.
The.
Lay of the land, kind of see ahighlight and overview of everything.
And it's not intense. It's relaxing.The kids can relax and stuff.
So we did that in Rome as well,and it was really nice to get that.
You're right, the historythere, it's incredible. I mean,
you're just immersed in it.
You're walking down the street and there'san apartment building that's 30 years
(17:47):
old.
And.
Right next to it
is a partial wall that'sbeen there for 2000 years.
It's just incredible. Yeah. Yeah.So beyond the history though,
I think this is a populartopic of ours, the food.
Yes. Good.
I mean, everyone talks aboutItalian food. Yes. Eat, pray, love.
That was a major focus. Italian food,
(18:10):
no one's a stranger to theromance and the passion towards
Italian food. There's a reasonfor that. I mean, it's incredible.
And being in Italy, we ate allsorts of places, like said,
grocery stores are really incredible,
buy fresh pastas forreally affordable prices,
hanging charcuteries, that kind ofstuff. It's amazing. Great cheese.
(18:35):
But what are some of thehighlights of the food.
I would say?
So we stayed in this farmhouseabout 45 minutes outside of
Parma,
and probably around 10 minutes fromwhere we were staying up in the hills
was this Ria, like afamily owned restaurant.
And I found it on the maplike Google Maps and like, oh,
(18:58):
let's go eat here. And weshow up and it's just a lady's
backyard that she is sort of turned intoa restaurant and we come over and we're
looking at the menu and we don't speakItalian. And she didn't really speak,
I don't think she spoke Englishat all. She spoke English.
So we were kind of miming like,well, what do you recommend?
(19:19):
And so she was pointing to this andshe's kind of trying to explain it,
but I loved listening to her talking.
She was so genuinely nice too. Shejust was like, this, just warm.
But the food was beautiful,and just the setting,
we were sitting in thistape outdoor seating area,
and the sun was setting and looking.
(19:41):
Out.
For.
Mountain.
Forest.
I think another thing you want totalk about the food museums in Parma?
Yeah.
So what's amazing is we get backto kind of the educational side of
what's going both scienceand history and culture
mixes with food in Italy. I mean,
(20:01):
because food is such a huge partof Italian history that There
are in the area we were stayingin is there's these series of,
I think it's five museums, fivefood museums. I don't know how many,
it might be seven. Yeah, maybe seven.
But there's a series of these smallmuseums really no bigger than a house.
(20:21):
They're really small museums,
but they're all centered aroundvery specific types of food.
So one was a sausage museum, one was awine museum. That one was in a castle,
I believe. There was a cheesemuseum, a tomato museum,
I think an artichoke museum. Aham museum. Ham museum museum.
So they're all one focus andthey're all in different towns too.
(20:42):
So what was incredible, allwithin the Parma region,
so all within 20 miles of eachother, and we think roughly,
so we had a car, so we got to go.
And because we were there forover a month or for a month,
we just spread out our time.
We would go to one museum a day overthe course of a week or a couple weeks,
(21:03):
and they were incredible.
We got to go to these new towns that weprobably wouldn't have seen or gone to
in general.And then you get there,
and some places had samplesand some places didn't.
The Tomato Museum obviouslydidn't have samples of tomatoes,
but it was really cool to learn aboutthe history of tomatoes that came from
the Americas. But.
(21:25):
Yeah, well, I meanthat's another thing too.
It's like you see theeffects of colonialism,
globalization and how that hashugely influenced and impacted
Italian cuisine. Yeah.
We and the tomatoes and stuff. Anyways,
so that was incredible.
(21:45):
And then the other kind of foodmuseum thing that I would say was we
visited dairy in Parma. So Parma, ofcourse, is known for Parmesan cheese.
I mean, that's one of thethings that it's known for.
And.
Parmesan cheese comes fromthat region of the world.
And so we went to a dairy.
There.
(22:05):
And learned about how they make Parmesan.
We watched
the whole process ofcheese making from just the
mixing of the milk or the heating.
And then we went into the storagewhere they were storing these
shelves piled high withParmesan cheese wheels.
(22:28):
These huge Parmesan cheese wheels.Yeah, it was incredible. That was great.
That's a great example of, Imean, that was a science bit.
Yeah. Because in fact, before we did that,
before we went on that visit,
we watched a Ted Ed video about how cheese
(22:48):
is made or what wasthe history of cheeses,
so that the kids kind of had a little bitof already some context going into it.
And they spoke specifically aboutwhy Parmesan cheese is specific
to that region and stuff. Sothose were great. What else?
What are some highlights?
I think Italy is alsoa great place for art.
(23:11):
We did a fun little art activity,like a mosaic art activity.
We were learning about, the kidsand I were during our down days,
learning about Roman culture and stuff.
And so we tried to do our ownmosaics with magazines and things
like that.
But then we'd go to thecastles and we'd see the
(23:33):
artwork there or things like that.
Well, and then just Milan in general,
Milan is like this architectural haven.I mean, it's absolutely beautiful.
And of course, it's like one ofthe fashion staples of Europe.
It is beautiful. It might be blasphemous,
(23:55):
but we did not make it to Florence.
I was an art major and I should havepushed for us to go to Florence.
Many people have many worldgoing. Families have been like,
you did not go to Florence. Yeah.
Why were you in par?
We were so close Florence. So somedaywe'll make it there. But yeah, I mean,
Florence is a huge impact. We went tothe Sistine Chapel when we were in pro.
(24:18):
And.
Obviously the Michelangelo,
but we also saw Raphaeland the Hall of Statues,
and it is just mean forany art lover or history.
It's such a centerpiece forclassical art. So it's incredible.
Speaking of museums, thisis not an art museum,
(24:39):
but a very cool little bit quirky museumthat we went to when we were there
is Vol Landia, whichis, it's just outside.
It's actually at the Milan airportand is just like an airplane museum.
But it was really cool for the kids to go,
and we got to walkthrough an old airplane,
some old airplanes and stuff. And thenthere were some cars too that were there.
(25:04):
So yeah.
That's a great treat,
especially if you fly into Milan orsomething and you're just kind of in that
area near the airport, I believe.
Yeah, it's right next to the airport.
Yeah.
The only thing I want to mention alsois we also spent some time in Trento,
and I highly recommend getting tothe Italian Alps if you get a chance.
(25:25):
Stunning. I mean, I grew up inColorado here in the United States.
The Rockies are also absolutely stunning,
and I was blown away by just thesheer altitude and just beauty of
the Alps. And Trento is just this,
it's very similar to what's thetown that supposedly Romeo and
Juliet's based out of?
(25:47):
Verona.
Verona.
So it's just this gorgeousmountain town that has these Old
Castle structures. It was just incredible.
And there's a little bit ofGerman influence to some of it,
some of the food and someof the architecture too.
So that was pretty cool.
But we loved Italy.
(26:08):
Yeah.
Absolutely loved it.
You can read about some of the placesthat we visited in Italy on the blog
I wrote about Parma.
I wrote about the VolyaAirport Museum and also Trento.
Yeah, very cool.
Yes. So anything else to add?
I don't think so.
All right. Well, that's all for today.
(26:31):
Thank you for joining us on this episodeof World Schooling q and a with Astrid
and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notes forany links we mentioned in the episode
and visit my website,
the wandering daughter.com to divedeeper into world schooling and family
travel.
If you like what you hear,
please consider supporting theWandering daughter on Patreon.
It really helps us outand keeps the show going.
(26:52):
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access to office hours with us and more.
You can find us on Spotify orthe podcast app of your choice.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,
you can tap the bell icon to getnotified when new episodes come out.
And if you like this episode,please give us a five star review.
It really helps new people find our show.
(27:13):
If you're watching this on YouTube,
don't forget to like and subscribe andtap the bell icon to get notified of new
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You can follow me on Instagram at Wanderor Follow the Wandering Daughter on
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If you have any world schooling questionsyou'd like us to answer for future
episodes, feel free to throwthem in the comments or send us a
(27:35):
message@thewanderingdaughter.comslash podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
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