Europe with kids

Man, I'd hate to do multicountry with kids.

Personally, I'd just stick to Spain, or Stick to Portugal, or Germany (Austria is easy to throw in for Bavaria, I guess).

I think the kids would get a kick out of Bavaria.

Spain is very easy with kids that age. Easy to get into various parts of Spain via fast trains. Just got back from
Italy with mine.

She did great. We bought a cheap stroller, so she didn’t have to walk a ton. We cut it a bit shorter at the louvre etc, but she did really good. We just had a rule that anyone could have a snack basically anytime they wanted and stopped at every playground.

Your age difference might be a little tougher to pinpoint but we did Madrid for 2-3 days, Granada and then Sevilla. Spent about 5 days at the end in Barcelona.

Granada is cool for the Alhambra but ours thought all the walking was a lot. Sevilla was our overall favorite. Barcelona is a great city and was my favorite before we discovered Sevilla. Barcelona will give you some time at the beach or by a pool if need some lower octane days.

We stayed at the El Palace Hotel in Barcelona. It had a great rooftop pool with a killer view of Sagrada Familia. Was a great retreat in the heat of the afternoon.

My kids are older than yours (10 and 13), but we just did 16 days in Europe. Mine and my wife's favorite area we explored was in and around Salzburg. While my daughters liked this region, my oldest HATED all the stairs that comes with the mountains there.

Flew into Munich and spent 2 days there visiting the city; Neuschwanstein castle, Dachau concentration camp, Olympic Park, some biergartens (great food and the beer was same price or cheaper than water), and watched the Rathaus-Glockenspiel.

Then drove to Salzburg where we spent 4 days. Did a Sound of Music tour for my wife, it was meh in my opinion. Went to the village of Halstatt for a salt mine tour. Both the tour and village were extremely interesting. There is no driving in the town and parking fills up very quick so you have to get there early. Also drove to Werfen to tour the ice cave. It was roughly 25 degrees inside the cave and (due to the convection wind that causes the ice) there is about a 50 mph gust that hits youin the face when the door is opened at the entrance. While we where there we also toured a fortress and watch a bird show/demonstration with some very close encounters (falcons, hawks, eagles, and buzzards).

Drove back to Munich to fly to Brussels via Amsterdam. We have some family in the southern tip of the Netherlands so we stayed with them for a few days. There was a music festival outside their apartment so we got to listen to some pretty decent music each evening when we returned from our excursions. While there we went into Brussels for waffle making and chocolate making classes. We wanted to visit Bruges but wouldn't fit it in. Instead we visited Ghent and tried several different street foods. My youngest discovered she loved poffertjes.

From there we went to Leiden. Visited Kinderdyke and Madurodam, walked the beach in Katwijk (water was too cold to get in), and spent a day in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam we did a canal tour, visited the Anne Frank house (this was the favorite park of the trip for my 10yo), and ate some authentic Dutch pancakes.

Took a train from Brussels to Disneyland Paris. Disney Paris is small, but is it setup WAY better than Orlando. Everything is all together so you just walk thru security once and you have access to both parks and the Disney village. At Disney we stayed on the grounds so we had an extra hour each morning. We used that extra early hour to hit the main rides before it was open to the general public. We spent 3 days (2 partial) at Disney (afternoon/evening, full day, then morning) and we were able to do everything we wanted with minimal waiting and no fast passes. I don't think that would be possible in Orlando due to the huge footprint of the parks.

Took a train from Disney to Paris. We picked up a day pass for zones 1-3 and explored the city. We went to the Eiffel tower (didn't ascend it) and explored the grounds under/around it. Checked out the Arc de Triomphe (had to hit this one twice as we were unaware Biden and Macron were having an event when we got there in the morning). Viewed Notre Dame and both Statues of Liberty in Paris (my oldest is obsessed with National Treasure and had to see them). We also toured the catacombs and had an unofficial private tour from one of the workers which was really cool.

Other than some bratty moments from the kids because they had to wake up too early, it went really well. In the Bavarian region, they damn near ate giant soft pretzels for every meal. That switched to waffles/pastries when when got to Belgium/Netherlands/Paris.

When it was all said and done, we walked 125 miles and drove 2300 km. No clue how many stairs we took as the first several days in Munich and Salzburg were basically all up and down (the ice cave alone was 1400 stair steps just inside the cave).

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Your age difference might be a little tougher to pinpoint but we did Madrid for 2-3 days, Granada and then Sevilla. Spent about 5 days at the end in Barcelona.

Granada is cool for the Alhambra but ours thought all the walking was a lot. Sevilla was our overall favorite. Barcelona is a great city and was my favorite before we discovered Sevilla. Barcelona will give you some time at the beach or by a pool if need some lower octane days.

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I think madrid might be somewhat boring for kids.

Barcelona/Granada/Sevilla would be a bit more interesting.

Madrid fine. No major complaints. The palace is really cool and some great art museums. But, it could be a large American city IMHO. That authentic Spanish experience is best found outside of Madrid, be it San Sebastien, Barcelona, or Sevilla, etc

ETA 2-3 days in Madrid is plenty and good place to end for flights as you said.

Go to Chocolat for churros and porros.

Why so many places? Granted a whole month makes it much more palatable.

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This is the thing with Madrid. It’s not an “old world city” at all. It’s not really a tourist city and the locals are not wild about tourists to say the least.

2 world class museums. Amazing restaurants. But yeah I wouldn’t spend more than 2 nights there with kids. Personally.

It’s great for flight purposes.

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Great info, thanks for the insight.

In my somewhat limited European travel, I find a little of that in Paris / London / Rome as well, all have really cool aspects, but still have kind of the NYC feel to me, which isn't bad, but not as "authentic" (not sure if that's fair, as some of the other smaller places).

I am bookmarking these posts, thanks again.

What about Ireland / Scotland / Northern UK area?