We’re Taking Our Four Kids to Live in Tuscany for Three Months — Here’s Why

This started with a conversation that probably sounded a little crazy at first: What if we took the girls out of our normal routine, packed up our family of six, and lived in Italy for a couple of months?

The more we talked about it, the less crazy it sounded. We love our life at home, and we have no plans to become full-time travelers. But we’ve always loved getting away from the normal routine and experiencing somewhere new together. This time, instead of taking a week-long vacation, we decided to make the detour a little bigger.

WHY TUSCANY?

Tuscany wasn’t actually where this whole idea started. It started with Boundless Life.

We came across Boundless Life while looking into different ways our family could spend an extended period abroad without putting our girls’ education completely on hold. Their program has locations around the world where families can live for a period of time while their children attend a local learning center.

Tuscany was one of those locations. Their program is based in Pistoia, a smaller Tuscan city that we honestly probably never would have considered living in otherwise. The more we researched Pistoia and the surrounding area, though, the more the idea started to make sense.

Instead of spending three months bouncing around Europe, we could actually have a home base. The girls could go to school, we could settle into something resembling a normal routine, and on weekends and breaks we could explore Tuscany and other parts of Italy. It felt less like planning a very long vacation and more like getting the chance to temporarily experience a completely different version of everyday family life.

HOW BOUNDLESS LIFE MADE THIS POSSIBLE

The biggest question for us was school. Taking a normal vacation during the school year is one thing. Taking four kids to Europe for a couple of months is something completely different.

Boundless Life was what made the idea feel possible. Our two older girls will attend their learning center in Pistoia during the week, while our two younger girls will be with us. That gives the older girls some structure and a chance to experience school in a completely different environment, while still giving us the opportunity to live together in Tuscany as a family.

We had plenty of questions before committing. How would school work? Where would we live? Could we realistically manage everyday life in Italy with four kids? What would we do about transportation, groceries, medical care, packing for winter, and all the other things you don’t really think about on a normal vacation?

We researched all of it. Probably more than we needed to. But eventually we reached the point where the opportunity felt bigger than the reasons not to do it.

WE’RE NOT BECOMING FULL-TIME TRAVELERS

We’re not selling our house, quitting our jobs, or trying to become a full-time traveling family. We actually love the life we have at home.

The idea behind this trip—and really the idea behind The Detour Family—is much simpler. Every once in a while, when life gives us the opportunity, we want to step away from the normal routine and take our girls somewhere different.

Sometimes that might mean a week at the beach. Sometimes it might be a road trip or a family vacation we’ve been planning for a year. And every once in a while, it might mean doing something much bigger, like packing up six people and living in Italy for a couple of months.

We don’t know how many opportunities like this we’ll get while the girls are young. But when the right one comes along, we want to seriously consider taking the detour.

THE TRIP IS BIGGER THAN TUSCANY

Tuscany will be home for most of this adventure, but we decided that if we were going to do this, we might as well turn the journey there and back into part of the experience too.

We’ll start in Rome, where we’ll spend the first part of the trip before making our way to Pistoia and settling into life in Tuscany. After our time there comes to an end, we’ll head to Vienna for a few days and then finish the trip in London before flying home.

That means this trip is going to be part vacation, part living abroad, part school experience, and probably part logistical experiment. We’ll be navigating airports with six people, moving a ridiculous amount of luggage, figuring out transportation between cities, finding places that work for a family our size, and learning plenty of things the hard way.

And that’s a big reason I started The Detour Family. I want to document the entire process—not just the beautiful parts once we get there, but how we planned it, what it actually costs, what we packed, where we stayed, what worked, what didn’t, and what I wish we had known beforehand.

WHY I’M WRITING ABOUT IT

I’ve always been the person in our family who researches the logistics. Flights, hotels, Airbnbs, neighborhoods, transportation, restaurants, things to do with the kids, and how to actually get six people from one place to another—I can spend an unreasonable amount of time figuring out how to make a trip work. My wife handles the other massive part of the operation: figuring out what six people actually need to bring and building the packing lists that somehow keep all of us organized—including me.

While planning this one, I realized how much of the information we were looking for was scattered all over the place. Traveling as a family of six is different. Staying somewhere for three months is different. Add four kids, school, winter weather, food restrictions, a pile of luggage, and multiple countries, and suddenly the little details matter a lot.

So I decided to write it all down.

The Detour Family is where I’ll share what we learn from this trip and the others we take along the way. Not as travel experts, and definitely not as people who have everything figured out. Just as a family that likes occasionally stepping away from the usual routine, seeing somewhere new, and figuring things out as we go.

SO HERE WE GO

We don’t know exactly what the next couple of months will look like, and I think that’s part of what makes this exciting.

We’ve done the research. We’ve made the plans. We’ve asked a ridiculous number of questions. Now we actually get to do it.

And somewhere along the way, I hope our girls come home with more than photos and souvenirs. I hope they come home with a bigger idea of what the world looks like—and what’s possible outside of their normal routine.

For us, that’s what taking the detour is really about.