How feasible is driving to Rome?

[Sprogonthetyne]

Not all at once, we were thinking of stopping somewhere in France for 4 nights, then doing a second long drive into Italy, stopping there for another 4 nights, then a third 4 night stop halfway home. Each leg of the journey would be about 12 hours, which we were thinking of doing overnight so the kids sleep through it.

There would be two of us sharing the driving, and I usually work nights, so I'm confident about my ability to stay up and still be alert. Would this work or would we just be tired and crabby for half the holiday and loose too much time sleeping before/ after each drive?

Ha! I actually cried in the taxi on the way back to the airport as the driver was on his phone the whole time and weaving in and out at high speed. Which reminds me I booked an airport transfer in Sicily this month.....when we could have got the bus....😱

I’d take the ferry to Rotterdam (Harwich to Hook of Holland), then the Motorail from Düsseldorf to Verona.
You can get private cabins on both the ferry and train with beds, en-suite and so on.
This cuts the driving down a lot, gives you a mobile safe space.
https://www.seat61.com/motorail-trains.htm

It is a crazy place to drive if you aren’t used to it. Vespas zipping all around you and lots of horn sounding last time I drove there

I don’t think it’s worth it

Perhaps if he really wants to go to Rome you could explain that driving isn't really feasible and work out a plan for flying if you think it could work.

https://www.airport-parking-shop.co.uk/blog/uk-airports-need-step-assistance-autism/#:~:text=Contact%20the%20airport%2C%20the%20airline,you%20fast%20track%20through%20queues.

The car will just add a whole heap of misery and stress to your journey. I have posted above some information on airports and autism which could be helpful to you.

A day trip?! I loved Rome-3 days we had. Imagine it’s changed though, Florence certainly has.

We drove Oxford to Siena last summer via Eurotunnel. We did it over 2 days to get there with an overnight in Basel. Changed our plans to allow 3 days to get back, overnighting in Turin and Dijon. The 3 days was definitely preferable.
We also went down from Siena to Pompeii for a couple of days. Kids are older now tween/teens and are used to driving to Switzerland multiple times so knew it wasn't too much for us.

However if you take 3 days to get there and 3 days to get back, that's 6 days of your holiday taken up before you even start spending time exploring places. Though we did see small bits of the places we overnighted in, it's not the same as actually staying there as you're constantly thinking about when you need to hit the road again.

I loved the difference in driving attitudes between the 3 countries. French, very lane disciplined but speed limits not so adhered to. Switzerland, everyone obeys the speed limits but lane discipline a bit shoddy. Italy, ah, who cares about the road rules, what rules, they don't apply to me!

If you use the viamichelin route planner it will give you likely travel costs in terms of fuel and tolls. It might be more economical to fly. Plus we usually weigh up the stress of the airport vs any potential stress related to staying in unknown places whilst driving to Rome(although this might not be an issue for your son). We usually go to France on holiday and tend not to plan to drive for more than 8 hours per journey as it can take significantly longer in July/August (although driving in France tends to be quieter the last 2 weeks in August as most French people have finished holidays by then). Definately avoid travelling on Saturdays end of July- mid August. Don't know you son's particular interests but there are loads of Roman Aquaducts in France

Came onto suggest the train - or a combination of plane & train or ferry & train:

Full journey & more here -

www.seat61.com/Italy.htm#london-to-milan-venice-florence-rome-naples

Only you know your kids as passengers and you as drivers. We drove to Slovenia straight in 24 hours with an 16 month old.

Did we all survive yes, would I recommend it, not really. However we wanted to drive through the night mainly and stopping wouldn't have been much good as my DH would want to sleep and I wouldn't need or be able to with DS sleeping to his hearts content in the car, which has it happens was no where near as easy as
Anticipated and he had much less sleep and far more cartoons than we thought would happen.

We always drove to Italy when we were kids, just south of Rome. We stopped in France overnight then again near Swiss
Italian border. Took us three days.

Now we fly but hire a car and drive all over Italy. I love driving in Rome and actually don't find it problematic at all. Parkings fine if you book in advance. Lots of little underground parking lots in the centre.

I’d hire a campervan and maybe do one overnight in France or Germany, few nights near another Italian city (Pisa, Florence or Venice) then camping near Rome and 2 stopovers on the way back. Most large campsites in Italy do organised day trips to local cities so you don’t need to drive or stress out about public transport. Been several times when I was younger but as part of a 3 week holiday and typically a week in France as well on the way back.

We Interrailed to Rome and back at Easter- it was great. Does your DS like trains? I'm autistic too, and find them a much nicer experience than planes (except, I'm afraid, for Eurostar check in, which is now very like an airport check in since Brexit ☹)

You definitely can, you could do it in just two chunks with one overnight stop if you wanted to.

How do you think the train would go? Sounds like the perfect trip for inter-railing.

Hmmmm. 3 day drive vs a 3 hour plane ride. It's 1000+ miles from Calais, I'm a confident experienced driver but I did 500 miles in one day home from Europe last year and it absolutely wiped me out for days. No way could I have 'done' Rome after twice that journey.

With the right scaffolding support would your ds be able to better manage the flight? 6 days is a HUGE chunk of your holiday op, and you really can't see Rome in just a day.

Driving overnight is all well and good but you'd then need to sleep during the day, not easy as most hotels wont have you during the day, and if dh is driving will ds be OK to entertain himself whilst you sleep?

I really would be tempted to put whatever efforts you can into preparing ds for a short flight. A meltdown in the airport or plane is horrific (been there, done that) but versus a 3 day drive each way....

I would definitely look at the Motorails suggested by @MoxieFox, if you think that would be possible.

If not, it’s definitely doable. We’ve driven to Ancona for the ferry to Greece a couple of times. I would advocate for breaking it up into smaller chunks and not trying to do too much at each stop. We aim for 5-6 hours of driving a day split into two chunks with us each driving one. I personally don’t love night driving as I have terrible astigmatism but it can be good for reduced traffic.

Sounds very exhausting. Why not get the train with a couple of stop overs? https://www.seat61.com/Italy.htm

I did this! It took 2 weeks but we did have 3 days in Salzburg on the way. Itinerary:

Day 1: drive from York through France and to some random overnight stop in a Parkplatz Germany.
Day 2: Germany to Salzburg
Day 3-6: Salzburg (hotel)
Day 7: Salzburg to some random overnight stop in a motorway service station in the middle of the mountains about 100 miles from Rome.
Day 8: Arrive Rome near lunchtime.
Day 9-11: Rome (hotel)
Day 12: Drive back up to Swanau to see the fairytale castles. Overnight in a Parkplatz in Germany.
Day 13: Parkplatz to Sindelfingen (random German town that looked interesting)
Day 14: Sindelfingen to Bruges, overnight in random motorway service station
Day 15: Ferry and drive home.

I did all the driving as DH didn't drive and I was willing to do 8-10 hours of driving a day to get us there. We had no working air con and did the trip at the end of August, Italy was regularly 38-40 degrees in the day and for the Italy part, we literally did most of Italy with the windows down, broken fans on full blasting out warm air (but at least the air was moving), and drinking water nonstop. It cools right down at night though so sleeping is comfortable. We were glad of our hotel in Rome though. There were only 2 of us in the car and we took the back seats out of our Picasso and put a mattress in that could be unfolded for sleeping in rest stops between hotels.

It will be so tiring. Just book a flight and use public transport. Much simpler and easier.

Oh and it was a total adventure if you love driving! I have very fond memories of that trip and we had the freedom to do what we wanted as we booked hotels the day before we were due to arrive somewhere. We were using an old European Road Atlas to navigate (and road signs) as it was 2014 and my smartphone just couldn't seem to work abroad for some reason but these days you can probably just sat nav with Google Maps and find things like shops and petrol much easier than we did (we spent 2 hours driving around this random part of Italy looking for petrol late at night at one point). 🤣

How about drive to Dusseldorf and put the car on a Motorail train from there to Verona? I honestly wouldn't want to drive in Rome, but the public transport there is excellent, so maybe you could just stay outside Rome (also cheaper!) and use that. If you stayed a little south of Rome, the drive to Pompeii and/or Herculaneum would also be easy.

I’ve driven to Turin from the UK then parked the car and caught the train to Rome, that might be an alternative option for you? Trains in Italy are great and very fast. The super fast ones have an information screen on board that tells you how fast they’re travelling which is fun. It was part of a longer trip though with stop offs in France and Naples so I didn’t do it all in one go.

If you're ok sailing you might want to consider taking the ferry to Santander then driving to Barcelona before getting another ferry to Civitavecchia (Grimaldi lines). Much less time driving and you can sleep on the crossings which saves on hotel accommodation.