One Stranger. One Tip. One Wild Decision. Now We Live in Italy.
How a random conversation in Costa Rica led us to pack up four kids and move to Tuscany for three months.
There is a version of our life that looks pretty normal from the outside. Four kids, a home we love, a community we are rooted in, good friends, a full life. And it was good. But somewhere along the way we started craving something more. Not more stuff or more noise, but more depth, more presence, more world.
That craving led us to Costa Rica. Costa Rica led us to Boundless Life. And Boundless Life led us here, living in Pistoia, Tuscany for three months with four kids, the youngest just one year old.
This is how it all happened.
Where It All Began: Slow Travel in Costa Rica
We first fell in love with slow travel back in 2021. COVID-19 had just turned the world upside down, I was between jobs, Chris was working remotely, and we thought: why not? We packed up baby Sawyer and headed to a tiny walkable beach town in Costa Rica called Las Catalinas for three months.
What was supposed to be a temporary experiment turned into one of the greatest things we have ever done for our family. The town is stunning, completely walkable, right on the beach with hiking trails winding through the hills and has the kind of tight-knit community that makes you feel like you belong after about three days. There is even a little preschool where the kids can drop in, make friends, and get some routine while you are there. It just worked for us in a way that was hard to explain.
So, we kept going back. Once or twice a year, usually for about a month at a time, through pregnancies, through adding more kids to the crew, through all of it. Las Catalinas became our happy place; the destination we measured everything else against. It gave us the rare combination of slowing down and being fully present with each other while also feeling socially connected without having to work for it. If you know how hard that is to find, you know why we kept coming back.
The Stranger Who Changed Everything
Fast forward to July 2024. Hayes had just turned one, I was pregnant with our fourth, and we were doing our usual stint in Las Catalinas. We kept crossing paths with this guy around town, never caught his name, but on our very last night there we finally struck up a conversation, and he told us we really needed to look into something called Boundless Life. Then he walked away and we never saw him again. Truly the most mysterious and useful recommendation we have ever received.
We looked it up that night and immediately felt that pull; that specific excitement you get when something just clicks.
What Is Boundless Life?
Boundless Life is a program designed for families who want to live and travel abroad together, and they handle all the pieces that make it feels impossible to actually do.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
Furnished family homes, set up and ready when you arrive. No searching for rentals that can fit a stroller, a pack and play, and four kids worth of chaos.
A school program so your children have structure, friends, and real learning from day one. In Pistoia, three of our boys are in the Boundless Education Center every day, making friends and thriving.
Community built in from the start. Other families in the exact same phase of life, chasing the same things you are. Every daytrip, every activity seems to happen with another Boundless family, both organically and by community events planned by Boundless.
A local point of contact who can help you navigate everything from a doctor’s appointment to finding the right grocery store.
It had everything we loved about Costa Rica but with the added thrill of getting to experience an entirely different part of the world. Boundless currently runs cohorts in Italy, Sintra, Syros, Bali, Kotor, Andalusia, La Barra, and Kamakura, with three-month world school cohorts plus shorter summer and December camps available.
For us, it solved the thing that had always stopped us from making the Europe dream happen; feeling overwhelmed. Finding somewhere truly family-friendly, sorting out childcare, trying to build any kind of community when you don’t speak the language and don’t know a single person. It always felt like more effort than magic. Boundless essentially solved all of that in one package.
Why We Chose Pistoia, Italy
A couple of months after our fourth was born we were back in Costa Rica with a two-month-old in tow, which yes, was a lot, and we decided we were going for it. We booked a cohort in Italy for over a year out so we would have time to prepare and so the baby would be a little older. That time is now. He just turned one and here we are; at the start of our three months in Italy, all six of us.
We chose Pistoia as our first Boundless destination because it felt like just the right amount of adventurous for us. We had been to Florence, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast before so we had a feel for the culture, and let’s be honest, feeding four kids’ Italian food is not exactly a hardship.
What we didn’t fully anticipate was how much we would love Pistoia, specifically. It is considered the hidden gem of Tuscany and often called the “City of Art”. The city is easily walkable, and the locals are genuinely welcoming, particularly towards families with children. The relaxed atmosphere of the town centers and parks makes it an ideal place for family life.
The piazza right outside our front door has a market twice a week. The butcher already knows our name. The boys ride their scooters to school. This is not a vacation. This is just our life now.
For anyone thinking about Pistoia, Tuscany: it is ideally located roughly halfway between Florence and Lucca, making it a superb base for day trips and getaways to nearby historical Italian cities. We have already done Florence by train, and Rome is next.
What Life Actually Looks Like Here
Living here for three months is everything we hoped it would be so far. Three of the kids are in the Boundless World School during the day; making friends, learning, thriving in that way only kids can when you throw them into something completely new. Our youngest, who just turned one, is still with us full time, which means the adventure comes with a baby on the hip more often than not.
We have found some help with him a few days a week, and it has been such a gift. At home, time for just the two of us is rare. Time with friends that does not involve logistics and schedules, is even rarer. Being here has given us a small but meaningful window to actually having some of that, and that alone has made the whole thing feel more sustainable.
Some days we all explore together, baby in tow. Others, we hand off and take turns. Either way we are wandering into cafes, trying new restaurants, and soaking up as much of this place as we can.
The thing about having three months rather than a few weeks is that you actually get to settle in. You stop being a tourist and start feeling like you live somewhere. The kids find their rhythm. You find your favourite cafe. You start to know your neighbours. That depth of experience is something a vacation simply cannot give you, and it is exactly what we were after.
The Real Real
Even still, it is not always easy. It is hard. It is genuinely, sometimes exhaustingly, hard.
Chris works late into the evenings on calls back home. The kids’ usual snacks and cereals don’t exist here. Some days everyone is tired and nothing goes to plan and you look at each other and think: what have we done?
But here is what we know: we loved our life at home. We love our town, our friends, our community. We were not running from anything. We just felt ourselves slipping into the kind of routine that starts to feel like you are moving through the days rather than really living them. The kids are young. They are flexible and curious and not yet tied down by sports seasons and social calendars. We knew that window would not stay open forever.
So, we made a choice. Not the easy choice, but the right one for us. Because our kids only get one childhood, and if we had the ability to make this happen, we were going to make it happen.
It is hard. It is so worth it. And, we are just getting started.
Thinking About Doing This with Your Family?
If this resonates, look into Boundless Life. Seriously. Their Tuscany program is what made this possible for us; the housing, the school, the community, all of it. We would not have done this without the infrastructure they built around it.
You can explore their destinations and upcoming cohort dates at Boundless Life.
