Western Europe with a 6 month old

Also France could be very warm in the summer. Why not choosing more Northern and kid-friendly Copenhagen area? Interesting culture, delicious food and a world-known easiness of life mindset are great arguments.

It’s not an itinerary but start your thoughts by flying into one city (where you begin) and fly home from your final destination. Beyond that, I think it’s a great idea to spend longer in one place. Maybe even a week in 4 locations, if you find a good apartment. Then you have to decide things like city or town and how long a train ride you are willing to take.

You could easily start with Paris, then somewhere like Lyon (or Strasbourg), then move into Switzerland, then up to the Frankfurt area. Or you could spend your whole month in England, France, Switzerland, OR Germany.

Thanks for the replies! Copenhagen was on my list, it just doesn’t have direct flights from where I am coming from and seemed like it would be a big detour from anywhere else. I’ll take a closer look though!

1 week per city is probably about right. We aren’t that familiar with Western Europe so I wasn’t sure which countries are easy/safe to travel with a baby. Things like how common AC is in hotels/apartments are important to us travelling with a baby in summer.

Just a comment regarding things to do with a baby. All the cities have parks, etc. Remember that wherever you are, people have babies and kids and the parents need, find and have activities for families. Other than getting lodging with the proper bedding (and a fridge if need be for the baby's food) it will be like traveling with a baby in the US pretty much. Be sure you figure out how you want to walk around and tour with your little one.... backpack type carrier, front carrier, stroller? There may be places to rent strollers if you want. Figure out ahead of time how you are getting onto and off of the trains with your gear and the baby. People often help when you are somewhat burdened, but there can be some awkward and/or difficult moments in transit. Go to booking.com and put in your filters when you decide on a location. The site is a good one to navigate, even if you book with a place personally instead of booking.com.
If you decide to rent a car for any part of the trip, prearrange the car seat situation. I know in France they are very strict about them.

Bonne chance! Bon Voyage!

The best of luck to you. Please come back and post about how easy and hard this trip was for you. I am sure others with children would be most interested on how you handled a 4 week trip to Europe.

We did a 4 week trip to W Europe (Germany, Austria, France) with a baby and toddler and the following worked well for us:

• Stayed in apartments or multi room spaces (helpful during jet lag) with a washing machine.
• Stayed close to what we wanted to see in case babies needed some downtime and one parent wanted to be out and about.
• Stayed close to park or green space.
• Brought our own (double) stroller with rubber tires and storage space.
• Museums during nap time in stroller.
• Rented a car (helpful for baby gear x 2).
• Brought our own car seats. Brought one on the plane for toddler and reserved bulkhead seating with bassinet for baby. On the way back he’d grown and didn’t fit in the bassinet.
• Travelled to next destination during nap time, kept travel time under 3 hours.

Hope you have a great trip!

Thanks for the replies! Copenhagen was on my list, it just doesn’t
have direct flights from where I am coming from and seemed like it
would be a big detour from anywhere else. I’ll take a closer look
though!

Where are you coming from?

We aren’t that familiar with Western Europe so I wasn’t sure which
countries are easy/safe to travel with a baby.

Scandinavia in general is both easy and safe for travelling with children.

Our daughter brought her 6 month old to Paris with us. She checked her Bob to fly over and had a front carrier. Great city to walk and the baby went into the front carrier and slept thru the museums. Playgrounds in Europe are great but I don’t need to tell you that a 6 month old is still a bit young to enjoy them.

Thanks for all the replies. All great stuff.

Rented a car (helpful for baby gear x 2).

A car would probably be a lot easier but we are going to try to see if we can plan by only relying on transit. That’s what we do at home 95% of the time so shouldn’t be too much of a big deal… maybe we are crazy. Just the idea of driving on the other side + having a baby in the car doesn’t sound like fun to me.

Where are you coming from?
Canada

There just doesn’t seem to be that great of flights to Scandinavia, it could be the time of year as flights don’t always run year round here.

If we flew into somewhere in Germany/London/Paris, is there a quick way to get to Copenhagen while touring around? I can’t tell if there are high speed trains to there. Or would flying be the only quick way to get over there

Here is version one of what we are thinking. It's about 3 weeks+

Frankfurt - 2 days (day of landing + next day travel day to Amsterdam)
Amsterdam - 3 days
Brussels (Maybe?)
Paris - 5 days
France - 10 days
Frankfurt - 1 to 2 days (depending on when train gets in and departing flight)

-Flights from Canada to Frankfurt are around 1/4-1/2 the price of anywhere else. Usually London is cheapest, but not this summer for some reason.
-I'm not too familiar with Frankfurt, but maybe we will actually add more days there if it's worth seeing.
-For the 10ish days in France outside of Paris, we are going to want to pick 1-2 areas or 3 cities max. Some options that have popped up:
Normandy (would rent a car), Bourdeaux, Marseille, Nice, Lyon, Strasbourg

I've also considered something like
Frankfurt(2)->Amsterdam(4)->Brussels(4)->Paris(4)->Lyon(4)-> 1-2 cities in Switzerland (4)-> Frankfurt(2)
or
Frankfurt(2)->Paris(7)>Normandy(3)->Lyon(7)->Frankfurt (2) (with possible day trips to Versailles, Annency, Avignon etc. from those bases)

Any other recomendations in that sort of loop?

Frankfurt is really boring. It’s a financial centre.

There are direct flights from Canada to Copenhagen. But there are also trains from Germany to Copenhagen. And from Copenhagen to the rest of Scandinavia. And if access to air conditioning is important to you, you can also consider going somewhere with more reasonable outdoor temperatures in the summer.

But if you want to see Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris that is not a bad option. I'm not sure I'd say that Frankfurt is boring, it certainly has its charming parts. But it is one of Europe's major financial centres so it has a lot skyscrapers. There are some experts on the forum that can probably tell you more about Frankfurt, but there are also many charming smaller towns in the area that are worth a stop.

I would not take my good stroller. Years ago, American lost our good stroller and the reimbursement was only enough to buy a cheap stroller in Paris. Of course you know to take a bottle of formula for her to deal with the pressure changes on takeoff and landing.