Feet firmly planted in the present, Lee Aitken takes her daughter strolling down memory lane

A few weeks after I turned 13, my family moved from Wichita, Kansas, to Italy. Rome was to be our new home, but first we planned to spend two months on the Italian Riviera, on the spectacular stretch of rocky coast that runs from Genoa to La Spezia. My father had rented an apartment in Santa Margherita, because that was where one of his new business associates, a dashing Swede named Tor Fellbom, anchored his sailboat. In the space of a six-day Atlantic crossing (back then, people still sailed to Europe), I was transported from the land of hula hoops, swim meets, and backyard barbecues to a world of sleek yachts, avid boat boys, and small, unidentifiable sea creatures fried whole. That will always be my personal definition of culture shock.

The memories of that summer are among the most vivid of my travels. I recall sailing on the Fellboms' 40-foot sloop within shouting distance of Aristotle Onassis's enormous Christina, and stopping to take a swim, lowering myself hand over hand down the slippery anchor chain. Maria Callas was on board the yacht, I was told, and I like to think it was she whom I saw, shrouded in a silk scarf, on the back deck. I particularly remember the footpath that started in the center of Santa Margherita, went up over the mountain, and then wound down through seaside vineyards and umbrella pines to Portofino, the most fashionable spot on the coast. Many, many years later, when I moved to Paris with my daughter, I promised myself I would take her on that walk, though it was hard to imagine that it would be the same.

This year, just before Sophie turned 12, we made the pilgrimage. It wasn't our first trip to Italy—we'd already visited Rome (my choice) and Venice (hers). But it was the first time I heard my daughter declare, upon arrival, "I want to live here." Remarkably, Santa Margherita was pretty much as I remembered it: an appealing mix of seaside resort and working town, where local commerce was holding its own that have thoroughly infested Portofino. Since it was mid-April, the azaleas were in bloom. The buildings, adorned with trompe l'oeil cornices and carvings around each window, were painted in the muted tones of Italy: a chalky yellow, a washed-out pink, the faintest sea green.

We visited the marina and looked up at my old apartment. I wondered which of the sunbaked older men hauling boats up the beach had been the frisky teenagers following my 16-year-old sister down the street. The restaurant just below the apartment, where the proprietor had let us use the phone, had become a gift arcade. But another old favorite, Il Pescatore, was still in business, and we had a decent meal there, although I couldn't persuade Sophie to try the more exotic "fruits of the sea."

The tricky part of family travel for me is that Sophie, as the single child of a single parent, quickly tires of being one on one. So I choose places where I know there will be other children or I bring them along. In this case, family friends from Paris, with two boys close to her age, joined our trip down memory lane. They bravely put themselves at the mercy of my imperfect recall, which, for instance, got us on the coastal train from Genoa headed in the wrong direction. (I knew I'd made a mistake when the Mediterranean showed up on our left.)

To a great extent, though, my nostalgia was rewarded. On the second day, we started up the footpath to Portofino, first strolling along a cobblestoned walkway that rose in broad, shallow steps, and then, eventually, clambering up a steep dirt trail through the woods. Descending into Portofino, we meandered past the grounds of gorgeous old villas, putting dibs on the houses we could spot below. "Sophie's house," a faded terra-cotta with a cliff-edge pool, may well have been the one inhabited in my day by actor Rex Harrison, who zipped around town in a jeep. But I doubt any of it dazzled my well-traveled daughter as much as it once had the girl from Wichita.

The two-and-a-half-hour walk was far more strenuous than I remembered (what isn't?), but just as magical. I learned long ago, however, that you cannot stage-manage a child's memories: The only thing Sophie recalls about an early stay in the south of France, for example, is the dead cricket in the pool. Perhaps she will forget the path over the mountain. But I'm confident that her love of Italy will last a lifetime.