I’ve been meaning for some time to start regularly writing about travel books at The Mother of All Trips. I’ve got a stack of them in my office, some sent to me, some that I’ve picked up myself. No matter where I’m going, reading is always an important part of my preparations, both for practical advice and information and also for inspiration.

Recently I’ve been reading Every Day in Tuscany by Frances Mayes, the type of book that makes up an essential part of my travel library. Although it doesn’t offer advice or tips for traveling with children, in fact offers little in the way of nuts-and-bolts advice of any kind, it readies me for travel by opening up my imagination, which is just as important.

Mayes wrote the enormously popular Under the Tuscan Sun about buying and restoring a house named Bramasole in Cortona, Italy. Now, twenty years after her purchase of the house, she revisits some of the same territory with a very different eye and attitude. No longer consumed with rebuilding the garden or furnishing her new domain, indeed no longer new to expatriate life, Every Day in Tuscany is a less heady (if no less romantic) ode to Mayes’ adopted country.

Mayes is a diffuse and eclectic writer who tends to follow her own whims. There are moments reading this book when I wish that she would perhaps be a bit more disciplined and organized in her approach. But the lack of structure does make this a great book to dip in an out of. One day I might read about how to construct and use an outdoor bread oven and the next travel along as Mayes pursue the tale of Cortona’s native son, the painter Luca Signorelli. There are recipes, lists of old-fashioned Italian names, and even some darker moments when Mayes actually contemplates giving up her entire Italian enterprise.

Some of my favorite moments in the book, not surprisingly, are when Mayes writes about her grandson Willie, who was six at the time of writing (the book is dedicated to him). Willie first visited Cortona when he was six weeks old, and Mayes writes about how instantly comfortable he seemed there. She describes her pleasure in sharing Italian food with him, in introducing him to new tastes, textures, shapes and colors. And she clearly understands the value of traveling with a young child:

I never love Italy more than when Willie is here. Everything good about living here magnifies. Everything just ordinary takes on the aura of his interest. Which theologian said that religion should feel like a larger freedom? I like the idea and connect it with love as well. Having this boy in my life offers many large gifts and the best is an expansive sense of largesse. Maybe freedom comes when you can feel your best self way out in the open.

And what’s also vicariously enjoyable is that although she writes of homey things like making meals with her grandson, there is plenty of glamor in Mayes’ life – she is after all a famous writer, living in Tuscany. Some of this comes out as she describes a meal shared with Robert Redford and talks also of meeting writers like Muriel Spark. But mostly she writes of her Italian friends, of loving meals and parties both at Bramasole and at a second cottage she and her husband have purchased somewhere up in the hills nearby (no doubt mostly to escape the prying eyes of tourists, since her house is now on their bus routes). She also writes gorgeously about her peregrinations around Italy, trips to Portofino and Assisi and Urbino and Rome.

In fact, I was struck reading the book how much Mayes is driven by wanderlust. She is forever contemplating selling the house, moving elsewhere in Italy or the world. I love her ability to visit a place and imagine an entire new life for herself. It is that ability I think that qualifies one to become an expatriate in the first place. For me it’s a pleasure to go along for that ride with her, trailing along in the wake of her lush language:

Italy is an immortal playground. Does any country come close to its sustained, heady concoction of joys–serene landscape and magnificent art and layered history and savory cuisine and glorious music and welcoming people? So many ands. All in an elongated peninsula slashed down the middle with mountains, packed and stacked with dialects, great cooks, the Renaissance, hill towns, evocative cinema, ruins, castle, mosaics, villas, church bells, beaches, on an on.

Sometimes the best travel books offer nothing more than an invitation to dive into a place. This is one of those.

The cobblestones, wet from an earlier rain, shone under the light from the cafés surrounding the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. It was evening in early November, but the air was warm enough to sit outside, as Matt and I were doing, each of us enjoying a large glass of wine.

We were admiring the illuminated front of the basilica that sits on the west side of the piazza, which is named for it. Like just about everything else in Rome, the church is a mix of the ancient and the simply old, its main body and bell tower constructed in the twelfth century, its façade of pillars topped with Baroque statues of saints tacked on some five hundred years later. We had been dazzled inside by mosaics, graceful columns (thought to be originally from a temple to Isis). Christians have been worshipping Mary on this spot since at least the fourth century and the thick air shimmered with incense and age.

The mass was now over, and its participants were spilling out onto the square. Some of them clustered around the steps of the fountain in the middle of the piazza. This is what some people call the heart of Trastevere, the once-working-class district whose narrow streets are now home to trendy stores and artist’s studios. Others call it the heart of Rome.

Matt and I weren’t talking, instead we were just enjoying the chance to sit and rest our legs. We had been busy over the past two and a half days visiting the Forum, the Palatine, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the house where Keats died, Saint Peter’s, and the Castel Sant’Angelo. Our hotel was located a few blocks from the Coliseum, which rose at the end of the street like something from a movie, or our dreams.

A man with an impressive moustache and an accordion approached our table, singing of what I don’t know, lost love perhaps, for his voice quivered dramatically, his eyes rolled to heaven. Matt and I, in an expansive mood brought on by wine and exhaustion, were the only ones to applaud and tip him when he was done. He bowed with a flourish before moving on, his baritone voice hanging in the misty evening air.

Shortly thereafter we made our way through the rabbit warren of Trastavere’s alleys to Da Lucia, a trattoria on a quiet side street where strings of white lights and laundry lines criss-crossed overhead. Here the charm that lay over the evening continued, as we got the last unreserved table and watched as the unrepentant waiter shrugged and turned away other tourists without even offering them a later seating. We feasted on pepper spaghetti (loads of parmesan and fresh pepper but no butter or cream), spaghetti alla gricia (pecorino cheese, pancetta, and olive oil), a very thin piece of beef rolled around sweet peas and covered with a spiced tomato sauce, veal stew, and of course, more wine.

Of course, as romantic and sexy as this all sounds, we weren’t in fact starring in La Dolce Vita. Despite our pretense that we were carefree lovers there would be no passionate kissing or dancing in fountains. After dinner, we returned to our tiny room at the Hotel Lancelot where we crawled as quietly and carefully as we could into bed, at the foot of which 18-month-old Tommy lay asleep in a very small crib. Although we had enjoyed our dinner with abandon, we knew we’d pay the price for our late and heavy meal and copious wine consumption when he woke around 4:30, popped up, and grabbed Matt’s toe, giggling and refusing to go back to sleep.

For all its extravagance this was a working vacation. However, the fact that we were able to call it a vacation at all was made possible by the presence of Matt’s sister, Becky. It was she who, while we enjoyed our evening out, patiently fed Tommy morsels of pizza, drove trucks with him up and down our bed, tried to clean him using the shower in the miniature bathroom, and cuddled and comforted him when this shower proved to be the most terrifying ordeal he had ever undergone. She was such an expert and competent babysitter that when he fussed at bedtime, she realized he wanted her in the room, and responded by turning out the lights and lying on the bed next to his crib. When he cried a few minutes later, she said, “I’m still here, Tommy,” which calmed him enough that he fell asleep.

My point here is a simple one, and it’s one I’ve made before, but I think it bears repeating: one way you can turn a trip with kids into a dream-worthy vacation is to bring along some help. What form that takes is up to you. I happen to be blessed with a sister-in-law who is a singing, dishwashing, diaper-changing breath of fresh air who is always infinitely patient with my children. Your help may take a different form. But don’t be afraid to look for help, don’t be ashamed that you need it, and by all means – don’t forget to budget for it! I used frequent flier miles to pay for Becky’s plane ticket and it was worth every hard-earned one.

Today I’m dreaming not only of this romantic night in Rome, I’m looking ahead to our trip to London this summer and thinking about dinner for two at the River Café and possibly a play at the Globe Theatre. And I’m no mere dreamer – I have every intention of finding the help I need to make this a reality.

So what’s your dream this Monday? Please feel free to share a link to your own inspiration below, making sure you link directly to your post, not your site’s homepage and that you link back to this post. Questions? See About Monday Dreaming.

Photo of interior of Santa Maria courtesy of Scottjlowe via Flickr

Photo of Trastavere street scene courtesy of Heather Cowper of Heather on Her Travels.

Photo of Colosseum courtesy of Matt Taylor via Flickr.

I don’t know if it’s because of my recently-published essay about Florence or the fact that I’ve been sent a few books about Tuscany to review, but I’ve had Italy on the brain lately. This photo offers evidence that Tommy will be returning to Rome, having thrown his requisite two coins in the Trevi Fountain (one is for a wish, the other is to ensure a second visit, as if the siren call of the city weren’t enough to make that happen). Matt and I of course also threw our coins in, so clearly a family trip is in order.

We have no plans to visit Italy any time soon, but I’m wondering if perhaps next spring we might try to get ourselves there. I’d love to make an Easter pilgrimage, not to Rome, famously busy then, but to the villages in the Castelli Romani region where we would drive through the blossoming hills, stopping to sample the white wine and roast pork that the area is famous for.

I share this picture as part of Photo Friday at Delicious Baby. Have a great weekend!

As any of you who have traveled with your children know, staying in hotels can be fraught with peril. Rooms that seemed large online can turn out to be mere closets. You might end up staying next to a college rugby team on spring break. You never know when a disaster like a broken pipe might require a room change. And your children are almost certainly going to wake up far earlier than they should, excited and eager to jump up and down on the sofa bed where you have stashed them.

But in spite of this, there is something magical and glamorous about hotels. They have elevators, views, shoe-polishing cloths, ice machines. Someone else makes the beds. And there is that endless supply of clean towels…

When I think back on the hotels we have stayed in with our children, my platonic experience has to have been the Hotel Lancelot in Rome. I would love this hotel even if I didn’t have my children with me, because it is truly charming; I have never stayed anywhere that combined elegance and warmth in quite the same way. But it also stands out because it was a great place to stay with a small child. In fact, it is very apt that the hotel is named after a knight in shining armor because the people who worked there were truly our saviors when it came to Tommy.

Matt’s sister Becky was staying with us during our time at the hotel. In the evening, she would put Tommy to sleep in a portable crib that occupied almost all of the available floor space in our room before retiring to her own room next door. We would return at midnight full of various delicacies: pepper spaghetti, beef rolled around sweet peas and covered with a spiced tomato sauce, veal stew, and of course, copious amounts of wine.

Each night we crawled as quietly and carefully as we could into bed, silently praying that perhaps this night would be different. And inevitably, Tommy woke around 4:30, popped up, and grabbed Matt’s toe, giggling and refusing to go back to sleep. Matt would stagger out of bed, somehow find clothes for himself, and descend to the lobby. After he and Tommy took a few tours around the sitting area, dining room, and bar, Michael, the Ethiopian man who worked the late (or was it early?) shift at the front desk, would smile with dazzling white teeth and swing Tommy into the air while Matt rested and nursed his head. A few hours later when the lovely Paola showed up for work, she would insist that it was her turn to play with Tommy. And so it was that petted and loved and full of homemade muesli from the breakfast room, we would embark on our day surprisingly refreshed for people who had gotten so little sleep.

And this hotel would be perfect even if the staff wasn’t so nice. It would be perfect if the guest rooms weren’t lovely and immaculate. It would be perfect it didn’t have a beautiful courtyard with mosaic benches where Tommy could drive his trucks. It would be perfect even if it didn’t serve a killer buffet breakfast that includes piles of fruit and meat and cheese arranged to look like a Dutch still life. It would be perfect even if it weren’t a five-minute cab ride from the train station. Why? Because it is two blocks from the Coliseum, and really, what more does one ever need than that? This picture was snapped on a perfect November day five years ago. I’m thinking I may have to call the Hotel Lancelot and see if they have available rooms.

For another take on Monday dreaming, please visit Wandermom’s post about Chile, where she and her family hope to start a round-the-world trip.