We created this post in partnership with Bugaboo, in support of our new family travel newsletter, Yolo Junior
When we walked outside Roma Fiumicino, my wife turned to me with the biggest smile I’d seen on her face in a long while. “I’m home,” she said. Flying with a toddler—now that our son wants to get up and run—changes the concept of travel, but it’s worth it to experience that look on your hardworking wife’s face.
We were stopping in Rome on our way back to California after a lengthy tour run. My wife and her sister are musicians, and I’d joined them in locations throughout the Midwest and East Coast as both creative director and caretaker for our two-year-old son. Eventually, we had all wound up in the South of France, where I was booked to help them with a branding shoot while my talented sister-in-law prepared to pivot to shooting a well-known television series filming around Saint-Tropez—where longtime devotees increasingly worry about soaring prices and overcrowded hotels.
It turned out that Saint-Tropez is—like Mykonos—truly extraordinary, even with all the eye-rolling people love to do when you mention it. Wonderful beaches. Little country pizza places tucked away from town. The sea there looks exactly the way I imagined it would while watching Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse in college.
But then you arrive in Rome, and my heavens what a place Rome is. It was significantly cheaper to fly Nice-Rome-LAX than the Nice-London-LA route, and the more we visit Rome—at this point it must have been more than fifteen times—the more spectacular it presents. It’s become so special to us that even a stop of just a few days feels worth any effort.
Walking outside into the sun on your way to dinner, someplace like La Matriciana, is a transcendent feeling. Wandering the halls of Doria Pamphilj somehow exceeds memory every time. And now, seeing the city through the eyes of a two-year-old, you begin to appreciate places differently. Bernini would have loved witnessing my son’s reaction to the Fontana deli Quattro Fiumi. For reasons I’ve not always understood, my son is obsessed with sculpture. Standing before the River Ganges section, he pointed emphatically: “Water!” he said. “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
Being in Rome with a young child is a continual joy. Every waiter, every bellman, every person on the street seems kind and engaging. The suited, long-serving waiters at La Matriciana smile at kids with the same warmth as the doorman at the Corinthia Rome carrying strollers through the lobby. And everyone is patient, as if being delayed by a toddler is an honor. At La Matriciana, they seated us at the same table where my son had eaten his first red-sauce pasta a year earlier. The staff kept asking to see photos of our previous visit. When I think of my son eating pasta, I think of that table. This time, they brought him a dessert with a candle and sang “Happy Birthday.” Hopefully we’ll spend many more birthdays together in those exact seats.
Fortunately, being in Rome in early spring gave us a chance to visit one of our favorite places on earth, La Posta Vecchia, for their artichoke season festival. On a previous stay there a few years back, I had seen our friend Pat Johnson carrying his toddler on his shoulders through the hotel’s front doors and snapped a photograph of the moment. Returning this time with my own son perched on my shoulders, I realized the same image was now repeating itself with me. One of the beautiful things about returning to favorite places is seeing old memories refracted through deeper experience and family life. The older I get, the more I appreciate how fortunate it is to be in Rome on a day with beautiful weather and the good health to walk around.
For those who’ve never been, La Posta Vecchia sits directly on the sea. The beaches around Ladispoli are, according to some theories, where Caravaggio spent his final hours searching for his confiscated paintings and possessions. Most visitors to the grand estate are so enamored by the public rooms and expansive guest quarters—not to mention sea views—that they forget to spend time actually swimming in the sea. Or even visiting it. Arriving with my son, I found myself longing to spend time down on those beaches. He couldn’t stop exclaiming, with wonder, pointing at the wind surfers skimming across the surface of the deep. He went running across the stately grass lawn between the restaurant and the newly built pool as if trying to draw my attention to every overlooked corner of the property. And that may be the remarkable thing about La Posta Vecchia: even a lifetime of visits wouldn’t exhaust its wonders.
Further afield, we have spent deeply memorable stays at places just beyond Rome. Corte della Maestà in Civita is somewhere we’ve visited twice, exactly ten years apart to the day—once in 2015 just before our wedding, and again in 2025 for our tenth anniversary. This time we were accompanied by our son. In the years between, the property has earned much acclaim, including three Michelin keys, yet somehow remains exactly what it was.
It’s one of those places so authentic and singular it could only have come from the imagination of one person or family. To reach it, you cross a long pedestrian bridge to a cliffside town suspended above dramatic valleys. The owner comes to help you push your bags up the cobblestone streets. After winding past the main square, a motorized door opens onto a world of leafy trees, endless plants, stone pathways and pure charm. The front door leads directly into the kitchen, where elaborate breakfasts are prepared each morning. Beyond this grand kitchen sits a sweeping lawn dotted with roses and park benches. There are only a handful of guest rooms, and somehow the light is always magical, dappling through leaves all day long, waiting to be photographed.
Our first stay there came in the very early days of the project. It’s difficult to imagine a more indelible place to spend time with family, where blankets set out across the lawn became makeshift places for breastfeeding mothers—or at least that was their use for us. The founders recently opened a second property, a single-occupancy home near Lake Bolsena called La Corte al Lago, and we found the surrounding area refreshingly grounded and local. Then, of course, there’s Hotel Il Pellicano, the quintessential coastal stay not too far from Rome.
One secret of Europe is that in the low season—like April, September, or even October—the sea (or lake- water!) is yours at all of these places (and warmed by the summer season if you choose autumn). Rooms are a fraction of the price. And then eating in Rome is always affordable. Even on a modest budget, you can order enough plates to satisfy your toddler’s every curiosity.
This is how we discovered, at a table in Saint-Tropez, our son’s love affair with mussels. And at La Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, he loves diving boards and turnip soup. And how, along the way, we all fell a little more in love with one another at Corte della Maestà.
Oh, and he knows how to blow out birthday candles. If I’m lucky, many years from now I’ll be sitting at that table just inside the front door of La Matriciana with my wife on my son’s birthday. And afterward, perhaps before heading to the airport (or maybe we live there by then), we’ll spend a few days at La Posta Vecchia, taking in all its less obvious but transcendent splendors. Even though he will soon be too old to let me chase him across the lawn, that’s where my mind will return. And I’ll be grateful for the good health I had back then to truly run.
A few places we’ve taken our son over the last two years, even if only briefly…
Saint-Tropez
Hotels
Arielles (both)
Restaurants
St. Paul-de-Vence
Arles
Restaurants
Saint Remy de Provence
Hotels
Rome & Environs
Hotels
Corinthia Rome (Guest Book here!)
Restaurants
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