Alps in summer with 5 year old - recommendations, please!

[zzzz31]

Hi, would love a holiday in the mountains this year. DD just getting into walking and I'm keen on a holiday that involves walks, boat trips, a few cultural trips and great scenery.

Don't know where to start for hotel / location ideas! Maybe Austria? Perhaps something organised like a family hotel with activities? Or a great location and we do stuff ourselves?

Thanks

I would highly recommend Slovenia. We had an amazing holiday in Kobarid, in the Julian Alps. It’s a small town and easy to organise outdoor excursions and activities from there. Lake Bohinj is great for swimming as well as lake Bled. Plenty of walking paths from the town. Everyone was very friendly and we had a great time. We flew to Trieste in Italy and drove from there.

Look at Saalbach. Lovely village, Google the games at the end of the valley, and captain hooks spash park. Bus ride to Zell am Zee for bigger town and lake.

The Tirol region of Austria is lovely. There are a few kinderhotels there which are set up for families. They have kids clubs and activities for children which you can use as much or as little as you like. Have a look at the Hotel Buchau or Sportshotel.

Thanks for the suggestions! All sound great - off to google!

Went to Slovenia 15 years ago sans kids, but from what I remember, yes would make a great destination for us and our dd. Didn’t really see very much in the time I was there.

Saalbach sounds ideal. Will google.

Pigpogtastic, kinder hotels do sound good. Worried I have no German! Would that be a problem?

Any other suggestions really welcome!

Wondering if we should maybe consider Bavaria / Black Forest instead...

Not speaking German isn't a problem. The staff speak English and the hotels are becoming much more mixed lately. My kids have never been the only English speaking kids there.

We stayed at the Kinder Hotel is Hintertux in Austria and would recommend that - more for a few days / week than 2 weeks. In Hintertux there is a glacier so there is snow all year round, there's an ice palace in the glacier at the top of the mountain. In summer there's activities like white water rafting and obviously good for walking.

Hotel has its own tourist train which takes children to a farm where they can feed animals, massive kids playground with bouncy castle, trampoline etc. Excellent food - we did half board via Booking.com, its Kinder and something hotel. They did speak English though we have basic German. Flew into Innsbruck. Hotel is in the centre of Hintertux and walkable to cable cars.

It's this one: www.hintertuxerhof.at/en/

Thank you so much!

We have stayed in Fuschl, which is on a lake in Austrian Lake District Salzkammergut. This is quite a small place but very family friendly. On a nearby lake is St Wolfgang and St Gilgen, which are bigger towns. You fly into Salzburg, so can you can do the whole Sound of Music thing!

The Central in Solden, Austrian Tyrol, is fantastic. Packages seem bit pricey at first glance, but it includes everything, pretty spectacular food and excellent facilities. Beautiful area, lots to do.

www.central-soelden.com/en/

Look at the family packages section

It really is fabulous.

We had a fantastic few days in Saanen in Austria. You can get the train up through the mountains from Geneva. The Youth Hostel is really good value and gorgeous. There are brilliant trains and busses all over the area so you can start walks up the mountains. If you buy a pass you can use the lifts as well as trains etc as much as you like. So much to do with little ones and we can't wait to go back. It was a really affordable way of doing the Alps!

Sorry me again 😁 the photos on the Central’s website really don’t do justice to how family friendly it is. European hotels are generally so much more sensible about hosting young families.

That hotel looks amazing

Lac D'Annecy

We have a touring caravan, drove and stayed here, but they have rentals
www.camping-lac-bleu.com/

Perfect spot. Cycling, lake boat trips, larger town of Annecy as well as villages etc. Caves and trips up the mountain. We went up the mountain here www.lasambuy.com/activites-ete

Really good spot to holiday. We went in August and it was hot during the day and cool at night

We really love the Jungfrau region of Switzerland. We usually glamp at one of the two Eurocamp sites to save money as it’s such an expensive place, but the lakes and mountains are to die for! So many amazing playgrounds for that age. We have twin 5 year olds and go there every year. There are tons of walks, activities, boat trips, lake swimming etc suitable for everyone. Here’s our favorite playground: !www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/grindelwaldfirst/bort-alpine-playground/

Ack sorry the link isn’t working. But this is the playground. It’s the Bort Alpine Playground.

Thank you all for these fab suggestions! Exactly the kind of recommendations I was after.

I am loving the idea of the Austria lake district (as not actually Alpine and looks beautiful - see below on altitude!!)

I am trying to see how I could combine a week in Italy (Tuscany) with a week in Switzerland / Austria... without driving all the way from the UK. Still rattling around looking at flights between the two (which on some routes are very cheap)... Any ideas? Or it that a mad idea?

Eurocamp definitely appeals, as was planning on that for Italy. Didn't realise that was an option!

Now for the stupid bit. Having a silly panic about altitude. I don't respond well (get lots of ectopic heartbeats, very scary. One of my most frightening experiences was naively taking the cable car up from the Chamonix valley floor to the Aiguille du Midi near Mont Blanc... was desperate to get down! But that's up to 4000 metres in a matter of minutes!). Tell me someone please that if I stay in other Alpine areas, I can stay under 2000 m for walks, even with cable cars? What about the Jungfrau area, Linguaphile? Looks perfect and the Eurocamp there, but nervous about being too high up! However, I walked the Mont Blanc circuit 8 years ago with no problems but I think I might get nervous just above 2000m nowadays...

Maybe Lake Annecy it is!!

Thanks!

Also, I love the look of that hotel, JRMisOdious, and agree, probably worth it moneywise all in, but again, worried about being too high up... Is it?

Thank you!

That playground looks amazing, btw!

I’m not sure of the altitude actually, I’d be surprised if it was as much as 2,000 m though because in winter months you need to take quite a series of lifts/cables up to the runs. The hotel itself is in a fairly wide, flat valley and doesn’t feel at all hemmed in.

The Hintertux hotel is at ground level but the peak is 3,250 metres - there are 3 cables cars to get to that and walks from ground level. Ice palace is at top at 3,250m and there's Europe's highest kids playground www.hintertuxergletscher.at/en/summer/hiking/hintertux-glacier/

We flew to Innsbruck with Easyjet - check if can take hire car cross border. Its very close to Italian border - infact I think ski passes included some Italian mountains so as long as transport is possible should be fine to combine.

Yes do look into the Eurocamps there if that’s something you like! We like the safari tent at the Jungfrau site. Manor farm is good (if basic) if you can snag one of the avants as they’re right next to a little playground, and the lake there is nice to let the kids have a swim after a day of hiking.

Re altitude there are loads of great family friendly walks at lower levels! The walk from the Bort playground back down to Grindelwald is really beautiful. From the Lauterbrunnen valley you can just go up to Murren and there is a lovely easy family walk from there to a very sweet village called Gimmelwald. If the gondola is your cryptonite, there are also trains you can take up in a number of places. Schynigge Platte is a nice place to spend the day with some good age appropriate jokes and great views, and the little antique train you take to get up there is really fun for kids. For going to the very top you can take the Jungfraujoch train.

For boats, I highly recommend taking the old fashioned steamboat on Lake Brienz! You can hop on and off to explore different villages and the boat itself is really cool. Pro tip: spring for first class on the boat if you can as the steerage section doesn’t have many seats and gets crowded with sharp-elbowed tourists.

We live on the continent actually and we often break our journey with a stop in Switzerland on our way down to Italy! Could you hire a car in Zurich and do a round trip? It’s only 4 hours from Lucerne to the Italian lakes.

Age appropriate walks, not jokes! Autocorrect strikes again.

Sorry, me again. Just thinking you could easily fly into and out of Milan to make your life easier for getting to both Tuscany and the alps. It’s maybe 2 hrs to Florence from there and an hourish to the Swiss border as well. And easyjet flights there are cheap I think...