One of the things They (you know, “They,” as in “that’s what They say”) don’t tell you about traveling to wonderful places is that your children will be frequently deeply unimpressed, bored, annoyed, and uninterested. It turns out that children pretty much only care about kid things. During our travels, our kids have primarily been interested only in 1) Is there a McDonalds? And 2) Is there a playground?
To illustrate, the quote of the trip from four years ago: We landed in Rome to begin our first-ever overseas trip as a family. I, nearly in tears with gratitude, walked an 8-year-old Essie Lou to the Forum. THE FORUM. As we stood hand in hand, gazing across these glorious ruins, she got all quiet. And then said, “This is lame.” Sigh. Philistine.
But it was a good lesson. Kids like kid things. Unfortunately, kid things can sometimes be in short supply in certain areas of old Europe, so you usually have to seek them out. Rarely do you stumble across an awesome kid thing by accident. But when you do… *chef’s kiss.*
And so it came to pass on one of our first evenings in Siena.
We’d enjoyed a delicious meal at Il Pomodorino with our friends Pete and Rebecca and opted to take the scenic route back to our flats. We walked past Basilica San Domenico (St Catherine’s church), the soccer stadium, the Medici Fort (Fortezza Medicea), and then turned to stroll through Giardini La Lizza, a shady park (shady as in leafed, not shady as in sketchy).
Usually, La Lizza is pretty calm and tame. It’s long and thin, with a few pieces of play equipment peppered throughout, but it’s mostly just kinda open and nice. There’s a statue here, a fountain there. You can pass all the way through it in just a few minutes.
But we did not expect what we found: Luna Park!
It’s like a park within the park, and at least once a year in the summer, it’s all set up as a temporary carnival. Rides, games, lights. And there we were. The kids (12 and 8) lost it.
Fortunately, I had cash. We turned them loose.
The first thing they wanted to do was this giant slide. We didn’t realize until they got up there just how tall it was. We were taking bets on how it would go. Spoiler: Screams of delight, and immediately they wanted to go again.
Next was a tiny roller coaster. I love a good tiny roller coaster. For some reason, having the world’s tallest, most wooden, most unsafe, most likely-to-kill-you roller coaster is something that amusement parks advertise, but these little ones are just so much fun. You zoom fast and get to hoot and holler, and at no point does your nervous systems’ fear response explode.
Also, this particular tiny roller coaster is freaking adorable—it’s a giant caterpillar! I mean come on!
They both rode the swing ride multiple times. It’s a classic merry-go-round type of deal, but with swings. Again, pure honest good-old-fashioned fun.
This one had a clever racket going, where one of the teens operating the ride used a fishing pole-type thing to dangle a flag by the riders. Whoever snags it gets a free ride. The scam is that if there are siblings on the ride, they make sure one of them always gets it, so you’re always buying the other kid yet another ride. Unless you’re cold-hearted, in which case you let the other kid stand there and weep while their sibling with superior hand-eye coordination enjoys the spoils of victory. (We are not cold-hearted in this way. We spent many euros on this ride.)
Then there was a game where you…actually it was pretty unclear what you do at first, because it’s too easy.
But you catch 10 plastic swans out of a “river,” and each swan has a number written on it underneath, and whatever number all your swans add up to is the amount of currency you have, and you can pick prizes for that amount. Just like tickets at Chuck E. Cheese or wherever.
I have to say, the prize options were pretty great. I don’t even remember what each child picked—just that they were both happy.
On the way out, there were bumper cars, too. They didn’t get a chance to ride them (we were out of cash, and I don’t want to think about the amount of cash we were out of), but I loved the juxtaposition of this temporary, silly, sensationally colored ride against the backdrop of an 800-year-old church and the rich, dusty colors of the Siena skyline. So here’s a picture of that.
It’s refreshing and lovely and sweet to see your all-too-old tween genuinely excited about something so innocently fun as a giant slide. It’s gratifying to watch your eight-year-old lose themselves in play and fun. A moment when they weren’t being dragged to and fro, trying to wrap their little heads around an unfamiliar language, culture, city, country, continent. Just immersed in the moment. These unearned, serendipitous, surprising moments of joy are special for everyone.
Thank god for Luna Park.
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