Train travel in Europe with family of 4

[idealism]

Has anyone done train travel across europe to italy or croatia? did you sleep on train or do in stages - any info please greatly appreciated. thanks

I did when I was a child. My dad used to work for British Rail and one of the perks of the job was cheap rail travel in Europe as well as the UK. The four of us went all over - France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Morocco, Russia. We slept in couchettes on the train. I recall the longest single journey being from Calais to Milan - it took about 17 hours. You have to be careful when travelling such long distances and be aware that sometimes the train gets chopped up, so make sure you are in your own carriage at major train stations. Generally we journeyed in stages.

sounds fun!

Have a look at Seat61

We went to Austria (and back via Zurich ,mainly so ds1 could achieve the great desire of his heart, a ride on the tgv) on train last year, similar travel time as cent or northern italy. Dc then 2 and 5 and a ball was had by all, they want to go by train again this year. Seat 61 and the deutsche bahn websites are your best friends (deutsche bahn allows you to book tickets anywhere in europe).
Age of dc will influence heavily exactly how you go. We did lunchtime eurostar to paris, ran off energy and ate, then 8pm sleeper to munich. Breakfast and a run around in munich before midmorning train over the mounatins to Tyrol. We picked the munich route because the sleeper left early, unlike many of the other routes. If your dc are older, then this less of an issue. We booked proper sleeper beds, as felt sharing couchette compartment with little dc would be disastrous (and i remember couchettes being very hard...)
Have fun!

hello - this is a really interesting thread. have been thinking about summer holiday and just fancy something bit different. However, on quite a tight budget as have big trip planned next Christmas/new year.

Couple of questions - was it fun? Did you get to see much in each place or did you feel as though travelling all time?

Also - how did you manage luggage wise? Did you take big backpacks or small cases. We alsways take too much and I would be interested to see if we could manage travelling light?

Did you pre-book accommodation? or just get in when you arrived?

Going straight to Seat 61 now to investigate routes. I think would like to get to Italy.

Really grateful for any advice. K.

We traveled to Italy last May by train with our 2 DCs then aged 20 months and 4. We got the eurostar to paris which was great then had dinner in paris then took the sleeper from paris to Florence. We'd booked a sleeper but ended up in a couchette (long story!) and it was if I'm being honest a bit of a nightmare - very little room in the couchettes I think a sleeper would have been much much better - little things would have made a HUGE difference like not getting woken up at the border for your passports after you've just got to sleep, having a wake up call so you don't frantically get up early to not miss your stop only to find the train is delayed by 2 hours!. I probably slept about 1 hour during the journey. Would we do it again - Absolutely but be prepared for it to all go wrong. the Italians LOVE to strike at the drop of a hat hence why our train didn't have any sleepers on it. The DCs loved the train! Coming home we traveled by day and stopped overnight in Lausanne - this was great too - think day trains and night trains have their advantages. coming home we got the day train purely because the sleeper didn't leave florence until 11pm which for us was just too late. Go for it - don't let my story put you off am just saying you need to do something like this and treat it as a real adventure and an experience. Seat61 cannot be recommended highly enough and also call up raileurope and see what price they will do you on the phone - our trip was expensive but the price over the phone was better than online!
Have a great trip - am jealous!!! We're thinking of the sleeper to Spain soon!!

We did the train down to Spain as part of our honeymoon and then cruise before getting the train back home from Athens. Pre children but lots of fun.

We booked through railbookers.co.uk rather than rail Europe who were much better prices and more helpful - a couple of days after we booked they rang us up to see if we wanted to tweak our booking as a new offer had come out so for £20 each we could upgrade to a first class cabin which meant we got better beds, an en suite bathroom (weeny but fab to have) and a three course restaurant meal in the evening and a proper restaurant breakfast in the morning. As we would have had to buy a meal and some breakfast anyway it was lovely to eat and watch the world go by.

But seemed to exemplify the great service we got from railbookers.

We spent most of holiday in Tirol and a couple of days in Zurich, as dc would have got fed up of too much travelling. Also, we wanted lots of time for walking in the mountains, which we got. Luggage wise, we just went with bare minimum. 1 reasonable size suitcase, on wheels, 1 daypack each (about 30l size, as they also had to carry overnight stuff for the 4 of us; dc had a little pack each, basically just containing water bottle, book and sketch pad). We also got a superlightweight holdall so all the coats could be bunged in together when we had them with us (waterproofs always necessary in the alps!). I carried dd2 on a hipseat. I do recommend Austria as they have the german sense of organisation (everything runs on time ,buses connect with trains properly, clean, efficient) ,which is v helpful when travelling with little dc. Switzerland is amazing and has the public transport going for it ,but until the swiss franc falls, it's just eyewateringly expensive!

I did UK to Florence with two DCs (single parent) five years ago, when they were 8 and 4. Took the overnight sleeper from Paris to Florence with a 3-berth compartment to ourselves.

It was fun, quite an adventure for the DCs, but I can't say I got a huge amount of sleep - noisy, and the train kept stopping and starting. I then had to pick up a hire car in the centre of Florence and drive across the hills to Umbria on very little sleep, which wasn't ideal. Also going overnight meant we missed all the amazing scenery on the way down.

A year or two ago we went down to the south of France by high-speed train, during the day, and that was much better. I'm planning on taking them interrailing round Germany/Austria/Switzerland this summer, but I don't think we'll do any overnight trips.