Italy with Kids - Ferrara

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19 Sept 2008


With our last day in the area, we decided to have a look a the Castell Estense in Ferrara. After the usual nightmare of finding a park, which in this instance would have been easier with Ferrara's directions for carparks if only they hadn't been full, we walked in to the castle.

Complete with a moat, cannon balls, dungeons and a tower to climb it was great for the kids, apart from the (for them anyway) boring bit in the middle where mum and dad were again staring at the ceiling a lot. The painting, frescoes were great (not a par with others we've seen, but still worth the visit), with a strong theme of infants doung various activities and lots of unclothed men and women in sporting endeavours (greco-roman wrestling, that type of thing). An interesting feature that added a lot of colour to the rooms was a set of mirrors mounted on the floor at an angle so you could view the ceilings without craning your neck.






We then grabbed some pasticche and gelati at the Cafe American, which was very well appointed and the food was very tasty, and walked past the Cattedrale. The markets were shutting down by that time (1pm), but Joseph still found a trinket at one of the stalls.

The only other significant place we felt like visiting was the Piazza Schifanoia. This has the so-called room of the months. For €5.00 per adult, kids free, we walked through this series of museum and frescoed rooms, many in poor condition. Not really interesting for the kids but the garden out the back gave them room to run around afterword. Disappointingly, we weren't allowed to photograph the main room with the painted depictions of the zodiacal months, and there were no posters for sale depicting them either.

Back at the camp, Liam had another go on the little racing cars, and Joseph and Kylie went on the Mixtreme. Afterward Kylie had the cheek to tell me she enjoyed it! Later that night there was a small dance party for the kids, where Joseph strutted his stuff, while Liam and I went chasing frogs again.

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