Even though you have a month, your arrival day is kind of a waste, your last day is just flying
home, and you have 6 days allocated in Paris. So you actually have 2 weeks and 6 days for
whatever itinerary you end up with.

October should be a nice month weather-wise for the southern destinations vs the heat of
summer.

For any of the itineraries, I think 4-6 places is potentially too much. You need to consider how
long it will take to travel from each place to the next. If you have 5 destinations other than Paris,
you have 7 transits, each of which will take at least a half day. I hope you can see how the time
can be used up going between places and seeing not as much as you had hoped.

I would say to narrow down the # of places, and plan/hope to have the time to really dive into 2-3
places. Give yourself a larger amount of time at some place mid-trip to relax and take a break
from running all over the place.

Have you looked at the RS "best of Europe" or "family Europe"? Those itineraries are easy enough to recreate. Or get a copy of one of the guidebooks "Best of Europe" or the original "Europe Through the Back Door." These will have sample itineraries that include several countries. I couldn't find this on the website, but maybe you'll have better luck. My recollection is that RS recommends different itineraries based on length of trip and mode of transportation.
For trip organization, I use a spreadsheet with date/city/how I'm getting there/where I'm staying/what I plan to do (bold type for things that are booked). In the early stages, I have a different page for each itinerary.
For train travel planning, seat61.com is invaluable.

Thank you very much for these comments, I appreciate it.

Let me add to my first comment!

Group of 4, 2 adults, 2 kids (9 and 11). First time Europe trip. Love the idea of trains, fun way to travel. We want to see lots without moving around a ton.

Would Greek island hopping be a good choice?

I agree that there is probably too much on this trip, and I am trying to minimize as much as possible, as I know travelling every 3- 4 days is not ideal. Any suggestions on which locations would be the best to check out with the kids in mind? I love the idea of staying in 2-3 places and really exploring a fun, cool, and easily accessible area!

Maybe another way to plan your trip is to pick a theme. I saw another family with older kids who chose "cars" as a theme. They are going to Stuttgart and the Nurburgring, among other places. When I travelled with my 12yoa son, we hit a lot of car museums and aquariums. Castles (ruined or not)? Maybe like Ken your job can be Beach. Get the kids involved in choosing a theme and identifying places to see, and then figure out how to string them together. Atlas Obscura is a great resource for finding offbeat places to visit.

As a former teacher who took many trips to Europe with students, I would advise you to stick to Spain and France. This way you could have 1. a more in-depth experience 2. a less stressful trip avoiding far-away travel 3. a more enjoyable trip with fewer moves to different hotels.

akuznak,
Just so you know, travel between Spain and Portugal is always problematic by ground transportation. Definitely fly between the two, no matter which city you leave or arrive at. That being said, with the ages of the kids (and we took our grandkids last year, at 9 and 12 y/o), I would skip island-hopping in Greece...too much moving around. Italy and Barcelona are good, with a flight from one to the other. I would make Italy 10-11 days because your three Italian cities have so much to see and do. (e.g. Venice 3 days, Florence 3 days, Rome 5 days,,,,you can play around with this. ) Trains between each one are quick and easy. Rome would have more of interest to the kids, I think. And a longer stay in Rome could give you one "down" day (Laundry, kicking back)

Fly from Rome to Barcelona....I don't even know if there are ferries. If there are, it would be a long ride to Barcelona. Spain has some good high speed trains, so you could see 2 or 3 cities without too much rushing around, if you so choose. Give Spain 8-9 days (Barcelona, Madrid/Toledo, Sevilla or Cordova).

Fly to Portugal (Porto OR Lisbon) for 4-5 days. Then fly from there to Paris. Lots of planes, but in most cases you would lose a whole day traveling between countries by train.

I may be wrong, but flipping the Portugal/Spain trip, and ending in Barcelona, there may be some high speed train option to Paris.

I suggest only three countries beside France (Paris) because of time used up moving between cities. A week in Italy with three cities uses up a half-day with each move, at a minimum,depending on how quickly everyone in your party gets going in the morning. (I speak from experience of a slow-moving travel friend.) And moving between countries will take about a whole day (checking out of lodgings, getting to airport or train station, getting to new lodging and checking in, fitting in lunch somewhere). You don't want to be doing this every 3 days for the whole trip. It's okay for part of the trip, but it's good to take a break from that also.

What a wonderful opportunity for fun for all of you! Have a great trip, whatever you decide!

akuznak,
I forgot to mention the common wisdom here on the forum. Count nights, not days. Two nights in a place means just one full day there, and maybe two half days on either end. That helps most of us in our planning. Bonne chance!

I agree wholeheartedly with the previous posts saying that you are trying to cram in too many different places. A couple of things jump out at me.

1 Greece: I would eliminate it altogether. A week isn’t enough, and you have too many destinations. I haven’t been to Mykonos; but from what I’ve read, it’s a place for lots of partying. I liked Santorini (many don’t), but I think that time would be better allocated differently.

2 Italy: 1 week is most definitely not enough, even for the “big three.” A whole week just for Rome, with another week split between Florence and Venice is a better plan. There are plenty of day trips easily done from either city if you wish. I have one recommendation for Rome. There is a Gladiator School ( use google to find). My grandsons, ages 15 And 6, had a great time there last March.

3 Spain: If architecture interests you, Barcelona is THE place. There’s also a beach, but it could be getting cool by the time you go. There are also plenty of day trips you can do from there. There are beaches and areas of natural beauty for hiking nearby.

All of the aforementioned have ancient ruins and intact churches.

I'd also add, "Where have you been already?" and "Where would you like to visit again?" to the mix to avoid doubling up or leaving things out.

I'm a super simple travel planner now with a "less is more" mentality - ie less changing rooms, more time in one place. So, I would plan around a week in a "major" or site dense area (London, Rome, Athens, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, etc) and just try to connect those by rail (mostly) if possible. Paris is covered. Rome easily swallows a week with the Vatican as a bonus. Munich (Oktoberfest will be at the beginning of your time) might be too much, but Salzburg and/or Vienna are nice options in that direction.

But since I could easily do a week in dozens of European cities or beach/mountain locations, it really is a wide open opportunity that I would definitely try to keep streamlined to avoid travel fatigue as much as possible.

Thank you all for the time you have taken to reply! I think we are settling on the following itinerary - please let me know if you see any issues with this!

Days 1 - 3 - Paris

Day 4 travel (fly) to Dubrovnik, Croatia

Days 5 - 10 - Dubrovnik

Day 11 - travel by car to Split

Days 12 - 20 Split

Day 21 - fly to London

Days 22 - 25 London

Day 26 - train to Paris

Days 27 - 29 Paris

It's better in some ways, but you have 4 days in Paris, 6 days in Dubrovnik,
9 days in Split, and 4 days in London (I count day 1 in Paris as jet lag recovery
and day 29 as a travel day back to the US)

If you haven't been to any of these places, well, most people would opt to
spend more time in Paris and London rather than Split and Dubrovnik. There
are plenty of interesting side/day trips in both Split and Dubrovnik, but that is
way too much time in either city at first glance.

Couple of more detailed thoughts:
- I wouldn't rent a car just to go between Dubrovnik and Split. Take the bus.
- Eurostar train tickets (for London-Paris) can get very expensive if you wait
too long to buy

I would suggest starting in Paris then take the fast train down to Barcelona--6.5 hours and 650 miles.

Tour Barcelona and then get on Norwegian Dawn cruise ship on 10/7/2024. It will be going to Cannes, Livorno/Pisa, Rome, Naples, Sicily, Corfu (Greece), Montenegro, Dubrovnik (Croatia), Split (Croatia) and ending just north of Venice in Trieste. Prices are very reasonable on this mid line ship. We have found that mixing a trip at sea simplifies the logistics of traveling with a family.

You could then take in Venice and fly to wherever you want to see from there.

We've been mixing up land and sea for recent trips and find this to be the biggest bang for the buck. It's also great to see new cities that you might like to return to. My wife is wanting to return to Montenegro and Croatia and see Slovenia before flying back to our beloved Budapest.

I would love #1 if you forget Barcelona and split that week to give you more time in Greece and Italy.

Ok. It is definitely harder than I thought to plan this.

Do others agree that this is too much time in Split/Dubrovnik? I really have no idea. We are travelling with kids so we want to NOT jump around a lot.

We have considered cruises, and funnily, that cruise specifically. I will look again at prices. Thanks for the tip!

At the risk of confusing you even more, I get the impression that you booked the
flights without any idea of what you were going to do when you got there. Or
where you really wanted to go (maybe Paris was a cheap fare?). And while you
say you want easy, the proposals you are throwing out are not easy. Going away
from Paris, what you are thinking about are complex trips in and of themselves.
Finally, it's getting kind of late to expect cheap train fares and room prices. Is overall
cost an issue?

If you stay within a few hours of Paris, you could conceivably do:

• Brittany, Normandy, WWII sites
• Brussels, Amsterdam
• Swiss or French Alps
• Strasbourg/Colmar Alsace-Lorraine
• Provence

amongst other things.

3 weeks can easily be crafted out of those possibilities. With a family, you'll
want to consider renting an apartment in some places to not be crammed into
a single hotel room and have a kitchen/washer.

I'd vote for getting rid of London. 4 people one-way on Eurostar could run you
$500+ all by itself.

You haven't even gotten down to the level of trying to figure out actual transport
or lodging since you're still stuck on an itinerary. I am sure there will be lots more
questions when you get to that point.

I think you need to simplify and keep it to one or two places to make getting around
simpler and reduce the # of places to research for lodging. Plan on more day trips
using the train or bus to get a bit away from where you end up staying. Or at least
figure out the first two weeks and give yourself a little breathing room for the last 2.

The cruise is also not a bad idea at this stage since it takes care of lodging and itinerary
in one fell swoop.

Thanks Shoeflyer! I appreciate your time and effort that you put into your responses.

Yes, you have called me out! :D lol I totally purchased these tickets based on fare. We are flying from western Canada and felt that it would be easiest for us to fly into Paris and fly out from there as the flights were cheaper. However, I did not book anything, and here I am.

As we are travelling with children, your suggestions for sticking around Paris are great, but more geared toward me with my husband trip, and not with them. I am starting to understand why Rick says to leave them at home. But again, that is not the option.

There seems to be many options, but at the same time, none that are suitable.

Thanks again for everyone's time in responding. I appreciate all of the feedback. I still do not know what I will be doing, but will need to sort it out right away.

Cheers.

Since when is Paris not for children? It's a children's paradise too. My kids loved it, my granddaughter loves it. Last summer at age 9 she did a Fat Tire Bike Tour https://fattirebiketours.com/paris/with her father, went on a tour of the carnival arts museum https://arts-forains.com/en, had a surprise visit up the Eiffel Tower her first night in Paris, took a family-oriented Seine boat ride https://www.vedettesdeparis.fr/en/vdp-cruise/paris-with-kids/. We went to the Louvre to see artifacts from places she had studied in school: Greece, Rome, Egypt. Concert at La Sainte Chapelle. Street concert and dance. We went to créperies, restaurants with good food, bad restaurants with good ambiance, peanut butter sandwiches at 10 pm for dinner in our hotel room... roof of the Galeries Lafyette and the biggest souvenir shopping on the floor just under the roof. More ideas-inside the Opera Garnier or Versaillefor bling, Versaille gardens by bike or golf cart, Montmartre, Jardin d'acclimation is an amusement park, Natural History Museum, La Villette Music Museum, La Villette Science Museum, Arts & Metiers Science Museum with all kinds of early inventions (airplanes, etc) You could spend a month in Paris with children.

So how about Paris several nights, train to Barcelona for some nights, take that cruise, stay in Rome for some nights, and finally fly back to Paris CDG the night before departure back to the US. Stay at an airport hotel. Easy-peasy.

And Euro Disney as well.

At some point (which was probably weeks ago) you just have to get
arbitrary and make something happen. Don't fret about what you might
not see, there was no way you were going to see it all anyways.

At this point, just book what Bets has outlined, it will work well. Then
you only have to figure out 3 lodging plans and 2 trains. And you and your
family can then start thinking about details and getting excited for your trip.

I took each of my kids to Europe when they were 11. At that age, they had opinions about where they wanted to go. And, since they had never been to Europe before, we tried to get a good overview of what there was. Now that they are young adults, they have all traveled independently in Europe, so you are setting your kids up well!

We only had about 2 weeks for each trip because of my job, but they were more like your option 3. For 2 of my kids we started in London (easy introduction to Europe as they understood the language) and there is so much to see in town, plus we took a day tour to Stonehenge. Then they got to travel the Eurostar for their first train ride - quite cool. Then Paris - the fat tire bike tours both in town and out to Versailles were a big hit, one loved the Louvre, they all loved the Eiffel tower and the food! Next we headed to Switzerland to see the Alps and do some hiking and high mountain lifts, boat rides on lakes, the Ballenberg open air museum etc.. Then one chose Salzburg and one chose Vienna and the trips all ended in Munich. In Munich, city bike tours and a trip to Neuschwanstein were loved by the kids. The oldest swam across an icy lake with some college students and the youngest did a tandem paraglide. They all loved the sommerrodelbahns in Switzerland and near Neuschwanstein.

My youngest chose to start in Scandinavia, then flew to Paris, skipped London and Austria. Ironically, this child did his bachelors degree in Austria.

Also, while I enjoyed Dubrovnik and Split, those are not the places I would take my kids on a first trip to Europe, and especially not devoting so much of the trip to them. But, it really depends on what they want and what your goals are.

Have fun planning!

wintering 22nd,
You have been inundated with ideas. It is good to remember that the cities you are thinking about visiting all have families living there with children, and those families see and do things with their kids, so, as Bets says, there will be lots to occupy your family. It's just a matter of finding and choosing what to see and do.
That being said, I agree that Split/Dubrovnik, for your childrens' ages, could be left out. Picking, say, three countries would be max for me (France, Spain, Italy?) We took our kids in 1988 when they had just finished 2nd and 4th grades, and they were not as bored with the museums as we thought they would be. Some art, like David's painting of Napoleon's Coronation in the Louvre, was so large that they were awestruck. The Invalides in Paris, besides Napoleon's Tomb, had lots of suits of armor (even for horses!) and really captivated the kids. They had fun in the many parks of Paris, loved the Eiffel Tower and the booksellers along the Seine. And that is just Paris.
Rome has the Colisseum, the Forum, the gigantic St. Peter's Basilica, Trajan's Column (so tall, and carved all the way up!), gladiators, giant statues in the Capitoline Museum......
My point is that you can spend a week easily in just these two cities and not have bored kids. You can find castles all over Europe that will impress the kids, so you don't need to move around every 3-4 days. Pick 3 or 4 cities and look for day trips from them as well. Don't be averse to flying between cities when that is more logical and quicker. But definitely give the kids the experience of trains. As mentioned before, trains between cities in Italy are the best choice. And the high speed trains (TGV in France) are good also. Flights between Spain and Italy are quickest; between Spain and Portugal, they most efficient and easiest.
If you stay about a week in a place, that gives you a day to do laundry and just kick back.
Lastly, see if the kids have any ideas and expectations about places in Europe (from movies, books or tv shows they have seen or read). Last year our grandkids (9 and 12 then) loved visiting castles, especially seeing swords, armor, battlements, trebuchets, etc. And they loved going to a grocery store and checking out the different kinds of foods (esp. cookies and snacks) comparing them to what they had at home! They liked walking in neighborhoods where the dwellings were hundreds of years old and wondering what it would be like to live in a home built 500 years ago.
If I had to plan this trip, my choice (for me, not necessarily for anyone else) would be Paris and environs, Rome and environs, maybe Venice and Florence for two full days each, and somewhere in Spain and/or Portugal (Lisbon OR Porto).
But that is me. See what is best for you then book, book, book.

Interesting that you seemed to settle on Croatia, London and Paris at one point. That does not seem like a bad decision, though perhaps you might want to increase time in both London and Paris and, with a bit less time in Croatia, also consider broadening your travels both in Croatia and France.

What has your family discussed about those places?

Croatia - Game of Thorns? beaches? Natural beauty such as Krka or Plitvice Lakes? Ferries to islands? What about bicycling? Have you looked at early October weather and air and water temperatures if beaches are part of your thinking? If beaches and parks are a big part of your plans, do you want to proceed directly to Dubrovnik and start in Croatia before fall cooling proceeds too much? I would suggest just a couple of days actually in Split and in Dubrovnik; of course day trips to wherever would not be days in those cities, or you could move about a bit. Also suggest that you do NOT split up your time in Paris, but instead proceed directly to Croatia despite the long travel day, if you can still make that adjustment.

Paris? Parks? Museums? Bets (as usual) has great suggestions. Major sights such as Eiffel Tower? Seine cruise? Side trips to Versailles or Chartres (esp. since Notre Dame will still be closed) or Giverney? If your kids don’t want to spend lots of time in museums (or the Museum like Palace of Versailles), what about Pere Lachaise Cemetary? A rainy half day visit through some of the passages couvertes in the 2d and 9th Arrondissements might be nice. I hate to suggest Disneyland, but given the age of your kids, might they like such a one day vacation from your vacation? Or better yet, other real life fairy tale castles. Fontainebleau or even a couple or three days around Amboise (Chenonceau and Clos Luce would be great for your kids) or elsewhere in the Loire such as Tours or Chinon with visits to Chateau Uzze (Sleeping Beauty castle) and the Fortress at Chinon where Joan of Arc convinced Charles VII to give her an army to command so she could defeat the English. That could be a great history theme for your kids.

London. Again what family discussions have you had? 5 or 6 days in London sounds better than four days. So much to see! If you add a fifth or sixth day to London, a day trip to Oxford to see its Museum of Natural History could be great for the kids.

Have fun. Learn new things. Cherish your family time.