Single parent holiday with 17 and 10 year old

[Wanttobeanonhere8]

Hi, really struggle with finding places that will cater to both girls with the age gap.
We’ve been to Paris, Amalfi coast, Berlin, Disneyland Paris, Algarve, Porto, Malaga, Seville, Milan. They loved Seville.
Would like somewhere I don’t need to hire a car (even if it’s an expensive uber drive from airport to destination). Pool would be great but not a deal breaker. Beach also great but not a full beach holiday as youngest loves the beach but eldest prefer walking around a town/city with shopping.
Have Barcelona and Florence in mind? Somewhere in Greece maybe?
We’ve had challenging times in the past and would love to take them somewhere to relax, walk into town/city, some shopping. If a full city break, could look at booking a hotel with a pool for the youngest. Thanks for any recs.

ETA looking for Easter break, maybe 5 days.

Lisbon? Plenty going on and still in close proximity to the coast

Italian lakes - somewhere like Bardolino? You get the pool weather and lots of interesting places to go and look around.

Lake Garda? We booked Bordolino for this Summer and you have a big variety of hotels with spas, pools but also the town and plenty to do.

A colleague went without a car and while she wasn't keen on the busses to Verona, she found it easy to go around.
You can fly to Verona, it's a 1/2 hour drive so an Uber is doable or your hotel could arrange a pick-up.

Great, thank you - will add these options to the list. With Lake Garda/Bordolino, do we need to go to Verona or is the local town big enough?

Easter is early April so it might not be quite warm enough for a beach/pool holiday in Europe, but Nice is otherwise a good option. Very walkable, 10 minutes ride from the airport, lovely food, charming old town and port area, pebble beach and quite a few hotels with pools, but check if they are heated.

@JazzyAmbs @reluctantbrit

I haven’t been but my colleague said they went out for dinner each night in Bardolini and Verona was just a day trip.

Bologna. You could combine with Florence

Go to Efteling in The Netherlands, combine with a couple of nights in Amsterdam. It’s a theme park but has a magical family vibe that is suitable for all ages.

@REDB99 have heard great things about Efteling so thanks for the reminder but will add to the list another time as it won’t be warm enough for us in early April. Prefer some sunshine

Have a look at Valletta, no beach actually in the city (in fact few on the whole island) and you'd need a heated pool at that time of year I think and they are not so common, but a couple of the fancy hotels have them. We went Easter 2024, primarily for sightseeing, it was warm enough to be on the beach in Gozo but you have to be hardy to swim (people were). I think Chania in Crete would also suit, but not been so maybe too early in the season in others opinion.

bardolino is lovely and there’s loads of other towns around the lake to explore. Verona is about an hour away if you wanted to see it as well.

Sorry I didn’t realise April initially so Lakes may not be that warm, however a lot of the hotels also have indoor pools so could still work.

Palma in Mallorca is nice. Not sure about weather in April.

Genova/Genoa.

I'm always surprised it's not more popular, maybe because it's quite gritty and unmanicured.

Beautiful city centre, gorgeous Italian Riviera beaches on the outskirts. Delicious food, great rail links all along the Riviera, free lifts and funiculars (!!) as it's pretty much a vertical city. The Ligurian Alps behind the city.

Mind you, we went at Easter and the weather wasn't too great, but that's the risk you run across the whole Mediterranean at that time of year I guess. The day we'd planned to hike across the Portofino Peninsula national park from the nearest station it chucked it down with rain, so we went to the excellent Maritime Museum instead.

Valencia is a great city with a beach. Malaga too which would have better weather.

I would go to Madeira. It surpassed my expectations. Really lovely place, stay in Funchal to entertain your eldest daughter. You can go dolphin spotting, there’s a tobogán down the mountain, lots of different tours. It’s a really interesting, vibrant place. Great restaurants too.

Barcelona would be great for them

I loved Barcelona, have been a couple of times (without children) and felt perfectly safe while being mindful of pickpockets. But when mentioning to others they seemed to think it wasn’t a great idea for me being on my own with my daughters, especially youngest? What do you think?

Early April is likely to be unpredictable weather wise so think south, definitely not northern Italy if weather matters to you. Perhaps Sicily, I love Taormina, its chic, a place where you can enjoy sitting in restaurants, wandering around shops, book a hotel with a pool, cable car to beach and day trip up mount Etna if she’s not currently active. Catania is bigger I think and you could also look at a day trip to Syracuse perhaps

What about a cruise OP? I’m a single parent and have cruised numerous times with my DS and we absolutely love it, we’re booked again for this year. A new city to explore every day, great range of onboard entertainment in the evening, great choice of food, pools and water parks on board…

@gototogo thanks, I’ll take a look at Sicily too. Taormina - I won’t need to drive?

Youngest gets really sea/travel sick but this would otherwise tick all the boxes!

Thinking about all your suggestions, thanks everyone.
To narrow down a bit:
going early April but prefer sunnier
Don’t want to drive but happy to Uber
bonus if there’s a swimming pool or a beach (even if it’s a beach day trip), but not a necessity
walking distance to a town, uber or train to a bigger city
something for the youngest to do, even if just parks and playgrounds
shops and browsing and cafes for the eldest
most of all, where I’ll feel safe just walking around with me and my girls

And for anyone who’s in a similar position to me, I can 100% recommend:
Seville
Amalfi coast
Paris inc DLP
As our top 3 choices for a single parent, age gap trip!