The conversation had grown annoyingly familiar. Us: "We're going to Italy!" Them: "Oh, that is sooooo great! Italy is sooooo fabulous! The food. The art. The scenery. I went there on my honeymoon/last summer/when I was just out of college and absolutely loved it. You will too." Then, in the midst of their rhapsodic travelogue came the inevitable, quizzical pause. Them: "But, wait, what are you doing with the kids?" Us: "We're taking them with us." Further discussion would then proceed in one of two ways. The brave souls would tell us to our faces that we had lost our minds, that taking three kids to any foreign country was insane, but taking a 10-year-old, a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old to Italy for two weeks was a waste of a trip. Everyone else said it behind our backs. We went anyway. There is a popular notion in this country that once you have children, the really cool, exotic travel adventure is over -- at least until the kids are off to college or you have a trusty, live-in baby sitter handy.

Unfortunately, many, many parents (and we were once among them) have settled for a definition of "family travel" that involves Disney, a road trip to some national park or an all-inclusive beach resort with scheduled activities for the kids.

Nonsense. While there is nothing wrong with any of those options, there is a much bigger, surprisingly affordable world out there just waiting to be explored by families with children.

It's all in how you do it. Which, by the way, starts with not listening to those who say you're crazy.

Room with a crew

I had longed to go to Italy since 1986 when I first saw "A Room With A View."

Little did I know 20 years would pass before I could do my own flinging open of shutters to take in the splendor of the Tuscan countryside. And certainly I had no idea my room would come with three children clustered on a couch huddled over a squawking Gameboy, packed with a battery re-charger and a handful of Triple As. We may have been crazy but we weren't stupid.

And that brings me to an important rule in traveling to faraway lands with kids: Sometimes you have to adjust your fantasy.

We arrived in Rome on Sept. 2 and rented a car for the drive north into Tuscany. Cars there are much smaller than in the United States, and Italians drive them much faster. Still, it is perfectly sensible when traveling with kids to be in charge of your own transportation. Just stay in the right lane.

We traveled in September because air fares were slightly cheaper and the crowds had lessened. Ah, but what about school?

I am a firm believer in the School of Life. Classes began for our children in the middle of August. I figured there would be plenty of time to settle in and participate in all the back-to-school events before we left. I cleared it with their teachers who assigned them each a travel diary to be shared with classmates when they returned. My kindergartener, who could not yet read or write, drew pictures every day.

This struck me as every bit as academic and probably more educational than what they would miss in the classroom. My hope is that someday, when they are studying the Renaissance or the politics of the Vatican, it will trigger a memory. Oh yeah, I saw that.

I also want my children to learn to travel in unfamiliar surroundings with ease and curiosity.

We rented a cozy two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in a converted farmhouse in the little-known Tuscan village of Bettolle. We picked it off the Internet from a list of properties offered for rent by the owners. It was billed as a working farm but that was a stretch. There were a few grape vines, some fruit trees and one rouge rooster who was rather insistent at dawn. Not exactly agriturismo.

Still there were beautiful gardens, a pool for the kids and a welcoming owner who surprised us one night with a plate of homemade pasta and cheese when she learned we had failed to make it to the local grocery store before it closed.

The price -- roughly $900 a week -- was less than the going rate for many countryside villas in well-known areas such as Chianti or Cortona. But it'd be a stretch to consider Tuscany unknown.

The Italian father of my daughter's classmate laughed when he heard our destination. "Oh yes," he said, "The American quarter."

Still, because Bettolle is mostly overlooked, it felt authentic. Few people spoke English. The men each day would gather in the tiny village square to sip their wine and gossip. The women remained cloistered and shy inside the ancient stone houses. We quickly became conspicuous regulars at the local eateries. Within a day or two, townspeople greeted us as if we had been there for years.