Ideas for European holiday by train with 18 month old

[HystericalDinosaur]

Hello,

We're looking at taking the Eurostar from London for a holiday with our 18 month old in spring as we have found flying very stressful.

I'm keen to keep the total journey time to under 4 hours and limit changing trains as much as possible.

I've been trawling Google but prefer scenic countryside, lakes or beach to cities. I'm struggling to find ideas that fit the journey criteria.

Don't mind if it's in France, Germany, Holland etc.

Can anyone suggest anything? Thank you so much!

You could try Amsterdam or the town Haarlem nearby. We did this (although we flew) because we had been ‘traumatised’ by a long haul flight when he was 12 months old. In Haarlem you could hire a car and visit other places.

I should add that flying with young ones isn’t always so awful. We had good flights and nightmare flights when ours was that age, so don’t get too disheartened.

I saw that a new sleeper train to Berlin is being launched in May. So you'd Eurostar to Brussels and then get the sleeper to Berlin.
Might not be appealing, but thought I'd mention it!

Sorry, just seen you'd prefer to avoid cities! 🫣

Are you planning on hiring a car when you get to your final destination?

What about San Sebastian? You could get the Eurostar to Paris, and stay a night (or two) in Paris, then get the train to Donostia-San Sebastian. It's longer than 4 hours, admittedly, but San Sebastian is beautiful and right on the seafront. The Old Town is amazing to walk around, with fantastic pintxos (Basque term for tapas) restaurants.

What made the flight helljsh? I've done long distance train travel with kids, and it wasn't dissimilar to flying really..

There are some nice Eurocamp sites in Northern Germany and the Netherlands if you are willing to hire a car. Or take your own, the overnight Hull to RottadamM ferry is reasonably pleasant (or Harwich)

Centre Parcs Zandvoort. You can take a train from Amsterdam, then change onto a direct train to Zandvoort which takes ~30 minutes.

The Centre Parcs is then a walkable distance from the train station. I would recommend renting bikes, you should be able to rent one with a child seat, or a cargo bike. There's a lot of beaches, dunes and cycle paths to explore plus Haarlem is a 10 minute train ride.

strongly recommend train to Amsterdam and then to a resort in holland. there are nice family friendly beaches near Leiden, and the trains are all easy. plus everyone speaks english and there is plenty to see & explore on public transport.

if you have the Omio app on your phone, you can plan train journeys & book tickets etc from the app.

Change at Lille for Calais / Boulogne / Le Touquet and search on Booking.com for something by the sea.

Oh yes! Le Touquet is lovely

Thanks everyone, this is so helpful!

To answer some questions:

• completely agree travelling of any sort with a toddler is stressful, which is why we'd like to keep the journey short.
• prefer not to hire a car, but not out of the question
• can you swim in the sea in Holland?

Thanks so much!

Netherlands has lovely big sandy beaches. It's the North Sea though so it very much depends when you're travelling as to whether you'd want to go in it. 😬

Yes you can. Last summer was very nice and sunny, obviously no guarantees. I had a lovely time at a Dutch beach, sadly did burn badly.

The man in seat 61 website is ace for train booking tips. Seat 61

Yelloh Aloha camping in Languedoc Rousillon