Tips for trip with adult children

How long will you be in Europe? Will you end up being a mini-group tour director?

Easy and stress-free seems to lean toward an organized tour, or a "My Way" RS tour. That way no one is in charge and everyone can relax.

We took our four kids (in their mid-20s and early 30s) on the RS Village Italy tour and we all enjoyed it so much that we did the Heart of France tour with them a couple years later. We all loved the tours and it meant Mom could be on vacation, too, rather than being tour director. Check with your kids - ours were eager to do it from the beginning. These tours give you plenty of free time, which worked well for us. And, in the evening, when we were weary, the kids could head out for the neighborhood pubs while we put our feet up :-). The tours always stay in centrally located hotels making this quite easy and safe.

Doing a tour sounds ideal in your case. They will make all the arrangements for you besides your airline tickets. Even in your free time the guide can help with suggestions. And if people wanted to do different things it wouldn't be a big deal. I haven't been on any of his tours, but so many people rave about the Rick Steves Village Italy tour. The places it goes are best done with a car (or tour bus), as opposed to larger towns and cities that can be accessed by train.

Having a car in Rome sounds like a nightmare, even if it didn't break down!

I find Italy one of the easiest places to visit on your own out of all of Europe. You can easily book hotels, entry tickets and train tickets online before leaving home. You can also book hotel transfers and any tours you may wish to take.

With adult children it's important for you all to decide exactly where it is you want to go and what you want to do. You don't say how long you'll be in Italy or where you want to visit. I would suggest getting some guide books for everyone to read. Have everyone make a list of two cities they want to see and what they want to see in those cities. After you have all the lists compare them and make your decision. Then you can start booking flights and hotels. You won't need to rent a car unless you plan to visit Tuscany. If you plan on visiting Rome, Florence or Venice you can easily get there by train.

Donna

Thanks for the replies. Will check out RS Village Italy. I understand that RS doesn't always stay at nice places. We don't need the ritz but we definitely need our own bathrooms :) The trip is on my shoulders and we have different ideas about what to see and/or do. If we go on our own, I like the idea about each picking 2 cities and activities. My son and I want a cooking class and I know my son would love to see a soccer match. I think I will start by checking out the RS tours. If we don't have enough time to include a cooking clas and/or soccer match, then we might go it alone.

Last May I did Rick's Heart of Italy with my brother, SIL and their 2 adult sons (25 and 20). We had a wonderful time. I didn't worry about getting people going in the AM for sightseeing or anything else. It was marvelous. We tacked a couple of days on in Rome ahead of time and one day in Florence afterward. We would have enjoyed several more days at the end but the older nephew could not take any more time off work, so we did what we could with the allotted time. In retrospect, we ALL would jump on this again.

We are going to Ireland in June and are sad the guys have other commitments and can't go. They are sad too!

editing to add: BTW, I enjoyed the 4 hotels we stayed at on the tour. I would classify them as nice hotels. All had en suite bathrooms and wireless. All were in enjoyable areas and had good food nearby. The hotel in Rome had AC, don't remember if the others did because it cooled down a lot after Rome and I just had the windows open.

Thanks for the comment about the hotels. The more I think about it, I want something easy and already planned for us. However, we're not really museum types. We like to be outdoors with nature or the local culture. Is there a lot of museum time with a RS trip?

Have you asked your kids what they prefer? My husband and i are also in our 30s and we'll be traveling with my parents and brother/sister in law. Personally, I'm not a tour person and love to plan travel, so we're helping out finding places to stay, etc. However, we only have 6 days altogether and then the others have to fly back, so husband and I are continuing on our own after. But ask your kids- they may be willing, or even eager, to help plan. I like the previous suggestion of everyone picking a couple things/places that interest them. Or conversely, maybe they'd prefer not to do a lot of legwork, in which case a tour does sound like a good option for you.

I've taken my daughter (32) to Italy 2x. Once we spent 5 days in Rome and took side day trips to Ostia Antica and Orvieto. Last year we spent 5 days in Florence and took side trips to Assisi/Perugia and Pisa. Both these trips bonded us closer.

It's so easy to travel with adult children. Talk to them and ask what their interests are...then plan a day or two with them in charge.
If churches or museums are of interest, then let them choose something.

Might be fun to plan your trip to arrive in a town that is having a festival...you can figure this out by internet searches.
Plan some down time....a day to casually just be in a town with no agenda. You don't need to have every minute of your trip planned out...and plan to change plans...sometimes the weather- or a train strike can interrupt your plans.

Train/bus travel is easy, might not be as cheap as renting a car for the 4 of you, but still no hassle of driving or navigating.

Start either south or north, and travel in one direction...so either fly into Venice or Florence and travel south to Rome, or start in Rome and reverse course.

Get a good guide book, search the internet, read this board for ideas.

I'm taking my son (31) to Bologna in the fall. He wants to see the Lamborghini and Ducati and Ferrari museums and factories...this trip is planned around his interests....we also traveled to Munich 9 years ago so he could see the BMW factory...as his mom, I have to tell you it was a great experience, and I really enjoyed the BMW factory tour!! We toured beer gardens and took the journey to Dauchau. It was amazing to see how moved my son was at the concentration camp. He understood the suffering and the history.

As for what RS tours include, you can see that information on this website. Just click on the Our Tours tab. If something is planned on a tour that doesn't interest you, I don't believe you are forced to do it.

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Only you know your family and their personalities. Are they easy going, go with the flow people? Do they finger point and place blame on the planner if something displeases them? I'm a planner and enjoy that part of the trip experience. It can take a lot of time. I planned our first trip to Europe when it involved other family members. We all had input on where we went. I had them look at hotels I found before booking to make sure they approved. Even so, if they didn't like a place once we got there, guess who was to blame. Yeah, me. If you don't have the time to plan or if that kind of thing stresses you out, go with the tour. Even a My Way tour.

Get the younger set involved in the planning and make sure you have buy in, whether you do an organized tour or not. Research the options for every town you want to see and let everyone choose. You do not have to stay together all the time. Read Rick Steves' Italy or whatever countries you are going to visit. Plan some meals together, and make sure they have some time on their own. It sounds like both are single, so perhaps you will all want to spend more of your time together. A car is not necessary unless you are in remote places like Calabria or Sicily. With four people, taxis can be a good option in towns instead of subways and busses, because there is less wait time, you don't have to go up and down major flights of stairs, and there is one price for all. Agree in advance on who pays for what, so there are no hard feelings.

Once my daughter took a class before an international trip, and they talked about the psychological "W" of travel, which almost everyone has on trips of a week or more. Think of it as a graph. At the start of your trip, you are upbeat and happy. Then you get tired, worn out, little things start to go wrong and all of a sudden you are crabby, uncooperative and upset. You may take this out on your travel companions. Eventually it will pass, and you perk up, feel better and start to enjoy your trip again. On longer trips (over a week) the process will likely repeat itself before you go home. Just knowing about this common pattern will help immeasurably, as you can recognize it in others, and often yourself. By planning for it, and planning how to deal with it you will make your trip smoother. Rather than creating a scene, you can say "I am near the bottom of my W -- I need a bit of time to myself" or "You seem to be bottoming out on your W -- let's stop for some gelato!" Often, the problem is dehydration, too much heat, or just plain tired. Take frequent breaks, drink plenty of water, and try to get enough rest.

That's all I've got.

Jan B

I would not be concerned about the quality of the hotels on the RS Tours, unless you really want large expensive international hotels with bell hops and room service, etc. I went on the RS My Way Italy Tour last fall, and am going back on the RS Sicily Tour this year. All the hotels were very nice, all with private bathrooms and nice breakfasts. I heard comments from other RS travelers that RS tours had moved up to nicer hotels over the years. These were generally relatively small and centrally located hotels, really very nice, and certainly convenient.
One of the great joys of these tours is the pre-planning and ease of transport from one city or town to the next. Generally the bus comes to your hotel, or quite nearby if the geography or nature of streets does not allow the bus right to the hotel. Sometimes while in transit you make stops to visit places en route that you could not do via public transportation. Certainly you can have some nice adventures dealing with public transport and transfers from train to train, or train to bus, or whatever, on your own. But you can also spend a lot of extra time, energy and angst in the process.
Also, there generally seems to be a nice mix of well-planned and well-guided activities and group meals, and free time for you to fill with your own preferences. The guides are excellent in helping you to plan your free time and best schedules or routes for those things, if you want that help.
I don't know how much time you have to travel, but many people stay at least a couple extra days, or more, at the beginning and end of your trip, which means you will be blending tour travel with some "on your own travel".