Quite a few people have asked me to post our itinerary from our family’s recent trip to Europe, and to help them plan a similar trip. Friends and family know I love to travel, and many of you have travelled with me on previous trips I’ve organized.
Few things give me greater pleasure than travel, and my preferred destination is Europe. I love the history, the art and architecture, the people, the food and drink! I have travelled Europe on my own and with family, and I’m grateful to my parents and grandparents for instilling in me that love of discovery. I have also organized trips for groups of friends, and I have been meaning to better document these trips for a while now. I firmly believe that travel is good for your soul. I feel how it changes my heart towards my fellow man. I see first hand how it changes my kids and how they perceive the world. I come back from these trips with my batteries recharged, full of new ideas, new energy, and new hope.
I hope you too can experience this feeling of rejuvenation. Come on, let’s get going.
part I : Planning : Europe – Summer 2017
24 days: Amsterdam – Rhine – Swiss Alps – Lake Maggiore – Piemonte – Milan
Itinerary:
Sun. July 16 – arrive Amsterdam – 3 nights at Museum Suites
Wed. July 19 – Board the cruise ship – Uniworld River Empress
- July 20 – Cologne
- July 21 – Koblenz
- July 22 – Rudesheim
- July 23 – Speyer
- July 24 – Strasbourg
- July 25 – Breisach
Wed. July 26 – disembark Basel – train to Murren – 3 nights at Hotel Eiger
Sat. July 29 – train to Lucerne – 2 nights at Art Deco Hotel Montana
Mon. July 31 – train to Lugano – drive to Lake Maggiore – 2 nights at Castello del Pozzo
Wed. Aug 2 – drive to Neive – 4 nights at Langhe Country House
Sun. Aug 6 – drive to Milan – 1 night at Four Seasons Hotel
Mon. Aug 7 – depart Milan-Malpensa Airport
Planning:
This trip came about because my in-laws wanted to do a cruise with their grandkids. After much discussion and research, we settled on a Rhine river cruise. After quite a bit more research, and prompted by Travel & Leisure’s World’s Best List we opted to give Uniworld a try. They offer a handful of cruises each year that they call “Generations Cruises.” These are family-focused cruises with dedicated family hosts and dedicated kid-friendly excursions. They incentivize families to take these specific sailings by offering ½ price fares for kids sailing on these voyages. This enables them to focus their energies on families for these cruises and presumably means there are even fewer kids on their regular cruises. I will go into more detail on Uniworld and the Rhine River cruise in a later post. But suffice to say, it was excellent and I would highly recommend it to anyone, with or without kids.
Once we had chosen the cruise, I began to build the rest of itinerary around those dates, with the idea of a total trip length of 3 weeks. With the cruise starting in Amsterdam, and ending in Basel, Switzerland, I started by mapping out possible flights in and out of Europe. First, I looked at flying into London or Paris and making our way to Normandy then through Bruges to Amsterdam, and finally, flying home from Zurich after a few days exploring Switzerland. I really want to do Normandy, Champagne and Bruges. But I think the boys will get more out of that trip at a slightly older age.
My second route, involved starting in Copenhagen, then travelling down to Amsterdam, cruising the Rhine, a few days in Switzerland then down through the Alps to Lake Como and then Venice.
Then two things happened almost simultaneously. My wife saw an episode of Rick Steves’ PBS show about the Berner Oberland region of Switzerland, after which, she demanded we visit Murren. And while pouring over guidebooks and searching the Internet, I noticed that Rick Steves had next to nothing in his books about the Piemonte region of Italy. In fact, compared to the volumes of information on touring Tuscany, Piemonte might as well be on a different planet as far as the American tourism industry is concerned. Which, considering the great wines that are made there, and the famous slow food movement that originated there, I found perplexing, and I must admit, incredibly attractive. And so was born a plan: fly into Amsterdam, take a few days to get over the jet lag and explore the city, then hop on a boat up the Rhine. Spend a few days exploring the Swiss Alps with Murren as a home base, then a quick stop in Lucerne before heading down through the Alps into northern Italy to explore Piemonte and fly home from Milan.
The next step was researching hotels and determining how much time each location would need/get. I prefer to stay at least 3-4 days in each place on a trip like this. It gives you time to explore a place and feel like you know it before moving on to the next one. I also try to keep transit times between places to less than 3 hours. More than that and you’ve spent a whole day in the car or on the train and that quickly becomes exhausting.
So here’s how it started shaping up:
3 nights in Amsterdam
7 nights on the boat
3 nights in Murren
3 nights in Lucerne
3 nights in Lake Como
3 nights in the Piemonte region
But as I dug deeper, I really wanted more time in the Langhe, the area of Piemonte where they make Barolo, Barbera, and Barbaresco, and the home of white truffles and Nutella. This lead to stealing a night from Lucerne, and due to flight times out of Milan, we decided to spend our last night in Milan rather than making the 2-hour drive from the Langhe to the airport on the morning of our departure, which in turn lead to the stealing of one night from Lake Como. Lake Como would then become Lake Maggiore, because the cool hotels on Lake Como are ludicrously expensive. Also, my preference is to visit the slightly less touristy places whenever possible.
Swiss Rail also played a hand in this. Our best deal was to get a 3-day Flex Pass. These allow for 3 days of travel within a 30-day period. Kids travel free with an accompanying adult during that period. Swiss Rail would get us from Basel where we disembarked from the boat, down to Lugano, a Swiss lake nestled between the Italian lakes of Como and Maggiore. This was important as there are multiple direct trains from Lucerne to Lugano, and it’s a big enough town to have car rental offices that have 7-passenger vans.
Hours of research netted several of the hotels straight away. I decided on our hotels in Amsterdam, Murren and Lucerne quite quickly, as well as a hotel in Milan that later cancelled due to some emergency repair work. Lots of searching on Lake Como quickly became frustrating, but it happily led me to Lake Maggiore and a terrific hotel there. As might have been predicted, Piemonte proved the most difficult. I had calls and emails out to over a dozen places before finally finding Langhe Country House in Neive. Many of these hotels never responded, or took several days to respond. Some were booked or were not equipped to accommodate extra beds in their rooms for kids. This is one of the challenges of travelling with a party of 6. Although we have the flexibility of having both kids in our room, or splitting them up and putting one in with the grandparents, some small B&Bs simply are not able to handle a group like ours. And I was intent on the idea of staying somewhere small and intimate while we were in Piemonte. I didn’t want a big hotel in Alba or Asti. I wanted to be out in the vineyards or in one of the tiny hill towns.
And so we were set. The boat was booked. Airfare was booked. Hotels were booked. Rail passes and rental car booked. Now it was time to start diving further into each location and see what tours or special event tickets we needed to book ahead of being there. Guidebooks like Rick Steves’ are incredibly helpful for this kind of info, as are hotel concierges. I always try to engage hotels directly in email conversations when I book with them. Booking directly often gives you better pricing than on-line booking sites, or where they are contractually obligated to maintain pricing, booking directly often results in other perks, like an upgraded room or complimentary breakfast or a nice bottle of wine in your room… establishing that relationship early also facilitates a dialog that can be helpful before you arrive. Reservations at special restaurants, advance tickets to shows or museums that fill up early, private after hour tours, these are all things that we wouldn’t have gotten if we’d booked though a third party booking site. For me, the joy of travel is often about these personal connections we make.
Next up, Amsterdam!