Traveling with Teens in Europe
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| Her very first glimpse of a "princess privy". |
By Anne and Rick Steves
When our kids were still in their single digits, our family travel was consumed with basic survival issues, such as eating and sleeping. By the time Andy and Jackie entered their teens, the big challenge became making our trips educational and fun. For most teenagers, traveling with Mom and Dad isn't cool, friends at home are the preferred vacation partners, and being told to "get in the car, we're going on an airplane today" no longer works.
High-schoolers feel that summer break is a vacation they've earned. If this European trip is not their trip, you become the enemy. Ask for their help. Kids can even get excited about a vacation if they're involved in the planning stages. Consider your child's suggestions and make real concessions. "Europe's greatest collection of white-knuckle rides" in Blackpool might be more fun than another ruined abbey. Remember to take it easy at the beginning of your trip, allowing a couple of low-impact days to get over jet lag.
Pre-trip study helps get children tuned into and prepared for upcoming experiences. Read books such as The Diary of Anne Frank for Amsterdam or The Thief Lord for Venice. Watch movies together such as The Sound of Music for Salzburg, and Brother Sun, Sister Moon for Assisi. Get a jump on the phrases, learning the top 20 or so before you leave home.
Since a trip is a splurge for the parents, the kids should enjoy a larger allowance, too. Provide ample money and ask your kids to buy their own treats, gelati, batteries, and trinkets within that daily budget. In exchange for the extra allowance, require them to keep a daily journal or scrapbook.
Help your kids collect and process their observations. Bring tape, a glue stick, and scissors (in your checked baggage) from home. But if you buy the actual journal at your first stop, it becomes a fun souvenir in itself. Kids like cool books — pay for a nice one. The journal is important, and it should feel that way. Encourage the kids to record more than just a trip log...collect feelings, smells, reactions to cultural differences, and so on.
With older kids, Mom and Dad have much more freedom. Kids can go to the breakfast room early or late. If they don't want to go out for the evening, they can stay in the hotel. Nearly all rooms have TVs (but be careful — European television after dark can be far more risqué than in the US, and some hotels have round-the-clock pornography channels). To pass the time, our kids each pack a handheld video game and an MP3 player.
Review the day's plan at breakfast. It should always include a kid-friendly activity. Hands-on tours, from cheesemaking to chocolate factories, keep kids engaged. Go to sports or cultural events, but don't insist on staying for the entire event.
Kids need plenty of exercise. Allow time for a few extra runs on the luge. Small towns often have great public swimming pools, and big cities have recreation centers or water parks (check out Paris' Aquaboulevard). Mountain bikes are easily rentable (with helmets), suddenly making the Alps cool.
Help your kids connect with children their own age. Staying in B&Bs or small guest houses, you'll find it's easy to meet other traveling families. When visiting with Europeans, be careful to work your children into the conversation (easier if meeting other families). In hot climates, kids hang out on the squares when the temperature begins to cool in the late afternoon, often staying until late in the evening. Take your children to the European nightspots to observe — if not actually make — the scene (such as the rollerbladers at Trocadero in Paris or the crowd at Rome's Trevi Fountain). Small-town pubs in Britain and Ireland welcome kids and are filled with family-friendly social opportunities. Many times our children have enjoyed playing pool or throwing darts with new friends in a pub.
Internet cafés allow kids to keep in touch with friends at home and European pals they meet on their trip. While Anne and I lingered over a glass of wine or dessert, our kids would run across the street to an Internet café and spend their dessert money for 20 minutes online. For about a euro, kids can purchase a 10-minute phone card and call a friend at home..
Make the consequences of packing heavy perfectly clear — they carry all their stuff all the time. Help your kids pack layers for warmth, clothes that don't show dirt, and sturdy, well-broken-in shoes. Each person should have a day bag for ready access in the car (it keeps down clutter). Make the car trunk a pantry of snacks, water, and picnics.
While the train is workable with older kids, we still prefer family vacations by car. With a car, we enjoy doorstep-to-doorstep service with our luggage and can be a little bolder about coming into town without a reserved room. I delegate navigating responsibilities to our kids. Following a map to help Dad drive through a new town or leading the family back to the hotel on the Paris Métro is a great confidence-builder.
An occasional Big Mac or Whopper between all the bratwurst and kraut helps keep our family happy. In a village, we let the kids find dinner on their own. We were in Austria the first time we did this — our kids couldn't believe we'd actually abandon them this way. After Anne and I gave them enough money for pizza and a drink, we took off for a romantic adults-only dinner under the floodlit abbey with a view of the Danube. Our children had no choice but to use their few German words and a phrase book, sort through a menu on their own, deal with the waiter, and be careful they understood the bill and had enough money. They did wonderfully and used their spare change to buy ice cream down the street.
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| Phrase books help Amerikids connect with colorful locals. |
In a crowded situation, having a unique family noise (a whistle or call, such as a "woo-woop" sound) enables you to easily get each other's attention. Consider buying cheap walkie-talkies in Europe to help you relax when the kids roam (don't bring them from home, as ours use a different bandwidth and are illegal in Europe). Older children can wear money belts with photocopies of their passport and hotel information. When using public transportation, have a back-up plan for what to do in case you get separated in the crowd or one of you gets off the Metro before the other (for example, plan to meet at the next stop — or, if all else fails, plan to reconvene at the hotel).
Most hotels have large family rooms. You need to know the necessary phrases to communicate your needs. When our children were younger, we requested a triple room plus a small extra child's bed. Now we get two rooms for our family of four: A double (one big bed) and a twin (a room with two single beds). In much of Europe, a "double" bed is actually two twins put together. These can easily be separated.
Families can hostel very cheaply. Family membership cards are inexpensive, and there's no age limit except a maximum of 26 in Bavaria (waived for adults traveling with their children). Many hostels have "members' kitchens" where the family can cook and eat for the price of groceries.
When parents tell me they're going to Europe and ask me where to take their kids, I'm tempted to answer, "to Grandma and Grandpa's on your way to the airport." While we've enjoyed our family time in Europe, it's easy to make the case against taking the kids. Traveling with kids is expensive. (They fly for full fare. And, out of exhaustion and frustration, you may opt for pricey conveniences like taxis and the first restaurant you find with a kid-friendly menu.) And two adults with kids spend twice as much to experience about half the magic of Europe per day that they might without. Also, older kids would very often rather stay home to enjoy their school break with friends. If you and your partner have 20 days for a family vacation, are on a budget, and are dreaming of an adult time in Europe, consider this plan: Go for 10 days without the kids and really enjoy Europe as adults rather than parents — the savings from leaving them at home will easily cover top-notch child care. Then fly home and spend the other 10 days with your kids — camping, at a water park, or just playing with them at home. (If your kids have a "cool" but responsible young-adult relative somewhere else in the US who they'd enjoy getting to know better, pay to fly them in and watch your kids while you're gone.)
Our two best family trips have been in Italy and the Alps. Our Italy trip featured five days in Venice (in an apartment in the town center), followed by four days in the Cinque Terre (a Riviera wonderland for kids). Our 20-day trip across the Alps — by car from Vienna to Zürich — included a few museums and lots of outdoor fun. For a range of perspectives on parenting in Europe, see the Travel with Kids board on the Graffiti Wall.
Living on the road far from their favorite TV shows and neighborhood friends has broadened our children's outlook. They've learned what all travelers know: The size of your backyard is up to you.
My kids' love of travel didn't end with family trips. Three summers ago, my son Andy joined his best buddy Alex for a six-week high-school graduation trip. His wonderfully candid (and politically incorrect) journal is available at www.ricksteves.com/andyblog. The good news: Europe on $50 a day plus a Eurailpass is still possible. The better news: The same magic I enjoyed on my "Europe through the gutter" trip in 1973 can still be had by vagabonds today. Any 18-year-old (or parent with an 18-year-old) pondering a European adventure on a shoestring will enjoy reading the account Andy and Alex share in their journal.
Our Kids Vote on Britain's Best and Worst
Imagine being a teenager forced to spend a big part of your summer vacation with that fortysomething robo-tourist, Rick Steves (alias Dad). Jackie and Andy did just that a few years ago. What were the highlights? Here are the results of our family's post-trip interview:
Best city: Blackpool — England's white-knuckle ride capital! The Pepsi Max Big One (one of Europe's fastest and highest roller coasters) is still the best. A tip: Avoid the old wooden-framed rides. They're too jerky for parents.
Best nature experience: A horse ride through the Cotswolds (about $30 per hour with a guide who'll teach you to trot). But wear long pants. One hour is plenty.
Types of tours: Open-deck bus tours are good for picnic lunches with a moving view. At museums, audioguide tours are nice because you can pick and choose what you want to learn about.
Fun museums: Camera Obscura, Edinburgh's primitive 1830s spy camera from a tower. It comes with a funny demonstration and three floors of fun illusions and early 3-D photographs. Warwick Castle, with Madame Tussaud's wax people having a garden party in 1900.
Worst food: The "black pudding" that so many B&B people want you to try for breakfast...it's a gooey sausage made of curdled blood.
Best new food: Chocolate-covered digestive biscuits and vinegar on chips (that's British for French fries).
Most boring tour: The Beatles tour in Liverpool — most kids couldn't care less about where Paul McCartney went to grade school or a place called Strawberry Fields.
Funniest activity: Bizarre Bath's walking tour is two hours of jokes and not a bit of history. It's irreverent and dirty — but in a way that parents think is OK.
Best activities: Leisure (LEZH-ur) Centres in almost every town have good swimming pools. Some B&Bs have video libraries, and others have DVD players and a video-rental place nearby that rents to guests of that B&B. Checking email and surfing the Web at Internet cafés — London's easyInternetcafé is huge, cheap, and fast.
Best theater: Shakespeare's Globe. First tour the theater to learn about how and why it was built like the original from 1600. Then buy cheap ($10) "groundling" tickets to see the actual play right up front, with your elbows on the stage. The actors involve the audience...especially the groundlings.
Most interesting demonstrations: The precision slate-splitting demonstration at the slate mines in North Wales. The medieval knight at the Tower of London who explained his armor and then demonstrated medieval sword fighting tactics — nearly killing his squire.
Updated for 2008. For lots more tips, check out our best-selling Europe Through the Back Door travel skills guidebook.