My husband and I are taking our 3 teenage kids on a 21 day trip beginning in mid-June. We are flying in and out of London (cheapest tickets) and have a flexible itinerary but plan to go at least to England, France and Italy. (We may visit Germany and pass through Switzerland as well.) The kids have been to Europe 3 times before (lucky them) and are still eager to go see old churches with us. They are used to trains, public transit, friendly low-end hotels and picnics, but haven't tried hostels or huts yet.
In the past we have visited large cities and stayed in one or two places when we went to Europe with the kids. We've done pretty well at finding cheap and good hotels in London and Paris and sometimes, but not always, getting 2 rooms. (But the kids were littler then.) Once we rented a flat for a week in Rome and did the same in London another time, and that worked well.
I'm wondering what our best strategy is for this trip -- part of it in Italian Hill towns, small towns in Germany etc.
Some questions:
Hostels and convents charge by the person, right? So that probably isn't a cheap way to go for us. Anyone know if any other arrangements are common?
Night trains might not save us much since 5 couchettes (Ugh, I can't spell.) might add up to more than a night in an inexpensive hotel. Make sense?
Are many BandBs likely to have 2 rooms to rent to us? Is it polite to ask if we can all crash in one room at such a place?
Are we likely to run into restrictions at hostels or BandBs about staying a minimum number of nights? (This question isn't directly related to the number of people, I guess.)