Family Travel in Europe

[keneri]

Hello! We're a family of 5 (youngest almost 9, 2 teens) located in Canada looking to do something different for our vacation to Europe (full month of July or August) this year. One idea was to backpack together through Europe, another to buy a second-hand vehicle and explore on our own. Either way, as you can tell, we're opting for a bit of a care-free approach.

Can you offer any suggestions/precautions/warnings about our approach as well as to lodging, places to see, mode of transportation while there?

Many thanks!

[espap]

Hello, we haven't done backpacking, but we travelled by car through Europe.

We were living in Northern Ireland at the moment and we bought a 7 seater (two adults, 6yo, 5yo,2 yo and a newborn) and went from England to Greece through Germany.

You can buy a car in England very cheap, we got a 15 year old Toyota Estima for less than 1000 US dollars and it was fine. Make sure it has MOT (roadworthy test, taken annually) for the duration of your trip. If you are planning to get back to England before going back to Canada, you can easily resell it. We sold ours in Greece to a South african family who wanted to travel through Europe.

Now, the bad side is that cars in england are left hand drive and that makes ackward travelling in Europe unless you want to limit your travels in England, Northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland. The big problem was overtaking but we were fine a) because the van was higher than most cars thus giving us more visibility, b) because we were travelling in the Motorways/highways so we were hardly ever stuck behind a truck in one lane roads.

For a right hand drive car you can look in Germany although we were shocked at how much more expensive they were compared to England.

We stayed in schools and universities through Europe. A bit hit and miss trying to find directions but very very cheap otherwise.

If you opt for backpacking, your best choice would be a inter-rail ticket for train rides across Europe.

Hope this helps
Esther

[Steven]

You've got it back to front, cars in the British Isles are RHD.

The problem with this is insurance and registration, you need a physical address in Europe and as a visitor you wouldn't have one so it's basically a non-starter to buy a vehicle. You can rent one but that might be expensive, I did try rent-a-wreck in Denmark once because prices there are so steep, but I instantly regretted it. There can also be restrictions on renting cars caused by insurance, e.g. you can't cross into certain countries from other countries, or the rental car company will want you to return the car to the country you rented it from.

What I would do in your situation is rent a car in the UK or Ireland, and use the train elsewhere as it works out cheaper. Fuel prices in the UK are way higher so you might think the train is an option until you check the train ticket prices. You can get seasonal passes if you think you will be moving around a lot which might be cheaper than renting a car.

What you want to see depends on what you're into, but Switzerland around Thun and Interlaken is nice and Vienna is also worth visiting. I used to like the Cote D'Azur but the traffic went from horrific to "why bother". And when you get to the point that you're paying five Euros for a Pepsi in St. Tropez you also begin to wonder what the attraction is.