"So kids, tell me what impressed you most about Michelangelo's David. And please, don't say his bum or his penis." I could see their brains recalibrating their responses as we waited for our meals to arrive after an eventful day in Florence and now on the outskirts of Cinque Terre. "I liked his eyes," says Mira. "I liked the veins in is hands," says Shannon. OK, not bad, I think. They were paying attention afterall. "And his nipples were really detailed," a...

I'm really not sure how we ended up here in Lucca. Italy was never on our list of countries to visit on this trip. Not because we didn't want to. We just wanted to make sure we had at least a few weeks, and preferably more, to slowly savour everything this long dreamed of but never visited place had to offer. That wasn't in the cards (or the budget) for this trip. We had to pick our European stops carefully and Italy is not what you'd call a budget destinatio...