Alps summer holidays with two young boys!

[Padn123]

Hi everyone, thanks in advance for your time! We're thinking that in summer 2025 we may take our holiday abroad with our two boys who will be age 7 and 4. The Alps looks like it could be perfect, but I'm struggling to work out which specific area will be best and provide easy access to the various activities we'd be looking for. Advice much appreciated.
Key criteria and interests:

• Less than 1 hour from airport.
• Self-catering accommodation
• July or August 2025
• Good chance of warm weather (above 20 degrees celsius).
• Easy access (under 45mins drive/public transport) to a wide range of activities that work well with very young children. Things I reckon that would work really well with our boys include adventure playgrounds, summer tobaganning, beach, swimming/kayaking, short but scenic walks, cycling (on easy level ground), anything animal/wildlife related
• Restaurants/pubs/cafes ideally within walking distance or short drive of accommodation

Once we have narrowed down the area, then I'm wondering what the best route to finding the accommodation is. AirBnb? Certain websites you'd recommend? Many thanks

We have been to Lake Lucerne twice over summer when the kids were little. Trip up Pilatus on the old train and boat ride was fun. There is a stretch by the lake you can swim and is very family friendly. Cheap flights with easyJet to Zurich and a lovely train ride there. The lake is directly opposite Lucerne station. You can also buy a pass for unlimited boat and train travel from the airport.

This is a fantastic location - we stayed in Morzine this summer and this is exactly where I’d choose to be.

FWIW I would choose somewhere a little quieter like Les Gets or Samoens over Morzine with small kids.

We enjoyed Morzine, there is a lot to do, but it’s very dominated by the mountain biker crowd, which has its benefits but also means the lifts, hill paths and roads in town are very busy with whizzing bikes.

If you stayed in Les Gets with a car you could access the same activities as in Morzine but with fewer bikes about! And the luge in Les Gets is a lot safer than the Morzine one.

Annecy is a very pretty town but wouldn’t be my pick for an Alpine or active holiday, it doesn’t feel like you’re in the mountains in the same way and everything outdoorsy (other than on the lake) is a drive away. It’s a good day or one night trip from Morzine/Les Gets though.

Morzine. We were in a catered chalet with a few other families and some organized activities. But you could definitely self cater and just arrange activities there.

In Morzine you would not need a car, have access to lovely public pool and other facilities. I don't remember it being overly busy at all. Just nice buzzy busy.

@Caspianberg thanks for the info. I noticed last night the last week of our hols seemed to help a bit.

@zeddybrek oh cool - I'll take a look at Lake Lucerne.

Did you watch the bbc pregame with paddy mcguinness this week? Think that was what they went up.

We've stayed at the Adler in Hinterglemm and found it lovely. They offer packages to cover food and drinks on an almost All Inclusive basis, but they also offer accommodation only (apartments not hotel rooms) from around €250 per night in August. You can also choose to add meals/drinks for certain days if you wanted to eat out mostly but then have a couple of easy going days where you're eating at the hotel. When we stayed we had a decent enough kitchen to cook full meals too.

Also, we flew into Munich and hired a car as Austrian flights and especially car hire were more than double. Flights and car for 4 were around £1000 at the time

@Caulidop that's really good info. I'm so keen to make it work and affordable. When did you go roughly, was it in recent years?

@kevby88 a couple of summers ago. We flew out of Heathrow with BA, and packaged flights and car hire together. We really enjoyed it there, the hotel offered the joker card for the area so all nearby lifts we had unlimited use. There were other things included like a nearby outdoor waterpark. In August, they have a farmers market/festival over the second weekend which was really entertaining too! Great atmosphere!

The other airport that’s further south is Klagenfurt. It’s down near the southern lake and mountains. Ryanair fly there so flight are cheaper, even in summer.
its about the same distance as Munich

Sounds amazing op. Wonder what the weather would be like mid August.

@mikado1 I’ve never been to Austria in the summer but I think it’ll be similar to French alps. Where being mountainous it could be fairly changeable as weather blows in and out. But if we’re lucky like we have been for 2 years in Morzine (France) it’s been nice mid 20s. Sometimes up to 30, but that’s why we like it - we don’t like it too hot.

Think we’ve made progress and found some more places releasing their avails this month. It’s more expensive than France, but definitely feeing more doable now.

@mikado1 - it’s pretty hot where we live. It’s around 30-35 most the summer in the Austrian alps. A bit cooler if you go up high hiking. But otherwise it was hot with very little rain this summer. Some summers you get evening thunderstorms which is nice as brings down the temperatures

Mayrhofen is a great base for small kids. It has plenty of self-catering accommodation and a decent children’s playground. Mountain top play areas, buses up and down the valley to interesting locations such as the Hintertuck Glacier, and you can get a train from Mayrhofen to the steam cog railway up to Lake Achensee and then do a boat trip across the lake with various stop off points. Google maps gives a 1:07 hr transfer time from Innsbruck.

@Caspianberg where do you live?

@NCTDN - Austria, south area

This was a week forecast for example this July (2024)

Summer 24 forecast as example

We've just come back from a few days in Graz. It was so much warmer than I expected!

@Caspianberg it's so beautiful round there x

Annecy. Although my friend would say Morzine, she goes every summer (I’ve only been there in ski season).

We stayed at Hotel Kaltenbach in Zillertal, Austria and it might tick your boxes. The prices were also very reasonable for the quality. www.hotel-kaltenbach.at/en/

We had a 2 bedroom apartment with full kitchen/diner and living area, which was really good, but also had their excellent buffet breakfast.

There was a lovely half indoor/half outdoor swimming pool with towels provided.

It is a short walk to the train station where you can get the local train to numerous surrounding places with lots of things to do.

There is also a good supermarket in walking distance. They don't do dinner, although they have a few snacks available in the evening. There weren't that many restaurants around, so it's not a great place if you want to eat out, although we had dinner at the hotel by the station one night, which was good. So we mainly self catered, but enjoyed the fantastic buffet breakfast. And we made a packed lunch each day to take out with us.

They offer bikes to hire for both children and adults and there are traffic free cycle paths nearby.

We flew to Innsbruck and got the train from there, which was relatively simple and we found it fine without a hire car.

We did stay a couple of nights in Innsbruck on the way back too, which made it easier for getting our flight home and was nice to explore.

Sorry, link didn't seem to work. www.hotel-kaltenbach.at