Take a car seat or not?

[KashaSarrasin]

We're travelling with 27mo DS to France and Italy on Sunday and trying to decide whether to take a car seat with us. Our trip outline is:

1. 3 hour drive to airport (obviously we use a car seat for this! )
2. 2 hour flight (EasyJet; Luton to Turin)
3. Bus from airport to train station
4. 1.5 hour train trip
5. 8km taxi ride. This is the bit I think we want a car seat for, DH does not think it's worth carrying one through stages 1-5 just for a 8km taxi ride at the end. I'm wondering if he might be right.

WWYD?

If we take a car seat we'd buy a cheap one (and leave our car seat in the car at the airport), I've been looking at two for £35 from Argos, Solofix and the Mamas and Papas 1 2 3. Anyone have any experience with either of these - are they light and easy to carry?

All advice and opinions very welcome! TIA

Don't know about the cheap car seats, but could you find out if you can get a taxi with a car seat? The laws regarding car seats have been in force in Europe longer than in the UK. We went to France last year and hired a car seat with our hire car easily. You would think some taxi companies would have them too.

Hi LittleB thanks for your reply! Unfortunately we haven't had good experiences with French taxis and car seats (we lived there for 3.5 years...) they're not very helpful at all! I agree though, you'd think taxi companies would at least have a few car seats at HQ that you could use if you book in advance, sigh.

I managed to persuade DH that there was no way DS is going in a French taxi on mountain roads without a car seat, phew.

Went to Argos today and bought the Mamas and Papas 1 2 3 seat. Got it back to the car and realised it didn't have an integral harness !!! I'm amazed that it's legal to put a child as young as 9 months in a car seat using only the adult seatbelt as restraint (actually worse than that as it's supposed to be usable with a hip belt as well .

So we took it straight back and swapped it for the solofix, which feels quite a bit more robust and at least has a 5-point harness. I know the booster seats like this aren't as safe as a "proper" car seat but there's no way we're lugging a 10kg seat halfway across Europe for a 10 minute car trip at the end...

Here's hoping the trip is uneventful (it's actually a work trip as I wouldn't choose to do a trek like this with a 2yo for fun, lol !