Family of five: 17 days & need advice

[lwilckens]

My husband and I , and our three children ages: 13,15,&16 are planning to backpack in Europe for 17 days leaving June 2010. Our tentative itinerary is this:
Amsterdam, France,Switzerland,Germany(near Munich),Venice,Cinque Terre, and Rome.
We are flying open Jaw into Amsterdam and out of Rome.We are going to get the Euro rail global saver pass. I am thinking of doing this trip without booking any hotel/hostel reservations as I would like to be flexible about how long we stay in each place. My husband and I have backpacked Europe before, but this was in 1991 after college and before children. We are avid travelers and are pretty flexible and not afraid of "winging it". My big concern is doing this type of travel with my children, and it's out of country so it makes me a little more nervous. The kids have traveled in the U.S. this way with us before,(all through Southern to Northern California without reservations) but I know that is much easier than Europe.

Has anyone done this with children? Also, if anyone has ideas of must sees in the mentioned cities, please advise. Thanks a bunch!

[WillTravel]

Yes, I have met families from Australia who have done something like this. I have traveled with my teenagers to Europe too.

Personally I wouldn't wing it with a family of five during high season.

If you plan ahead, you can likely get good deals on rail and accommodation that you cannot get by winging it. For example, there are some train tickets that allow five people on one ticket for a ridiculously low price in Germany and Austria (possibly Switzerland too). Prebooked and locally booked tickets may be cheaper than rail passes if you are willing to do the legwork.

I'd also reconsider the number of locations you have on your list. Four destinations, with possible daytrips, would allow you a bit of time to not be constantly traveling.

[lwilckens]

Thanks for the info! I will look into booking hotels in each place, it may take the stress off of me at the time of the vacation. Also, you mentioned booking rail in each individual country. Did you mean that I should book individual tickets in each country? Instead of rail passes? I did look into that, but I was looking at 5 individual tickets and the price was much higher of course. I will look into Germany and Switzerland to see what I can find. Thanks again for the help.

[WillTravel]

Other options are renting apartments, which may be cheaper than hotel rooms, and staying at hostels, where you could book a whole dorm room for your family (say a 6-person dorm). In a typical hotel, you would need two or three rooms.

It's possible renting a car may be a good deal too in your case.

For rail information, be sure to look at the national sites, not just raileurope.com which tends to have ripoff prices. You can see all the schedules for your itinerary at www.bahn.de even if the ticket isn't German-related.

[WillTravel]

There are a couple of relatively reasonable hotels I can think of offhand that have rooms for five:

Hotel Marignan, Paris - www.hotel-marignan.com
Hotel des Artistes - www.hoteldesartistes.com

Although I tend to think a pass will not be a good deal in your case, it's possible a pass might be useful for a subset of your itinerary. But in general, a rail pass that includes Italy is rarely a good deal, because rail travel in Italy is so relatively cheap, and if you have a pass, the reservation costs and waiting time to get reservations are very annoying.

As an example of what I am talking about for a ticket that works for five people, look for the Beautiful Weekend and Bayern tickets on Google. (Maybe there's a German name too, but I can't think of it.)

[herrbert]

The German name would be a schönes wochenende ticket. But please note that these are only valid on normal trains, and not on the fast ICE trains.

I think that one advice would be good to investigate, and that is whether it is not better to rent a car. This would make your trip more flexible, and in my opinion it would make it easier to find accommodation, as you are not restricted to a city. It would also make it possible to hit some smaller towns, on the way. This would be really handy in the mountains in Switzerland. (Although from Munich, it would be easier to cross into Austria, as going to Switzerland is a detour if you want to get to Venice.) The downside it that you need to have a parking with the hotel. If it makes you scared to drive into let's say Paris, you might want to check for a hotel a bit further away from the center. (sat-nav would be a nice feature.)