Trip motivation
For Winter Break 2023-2024, our family visited Germany and Austria! This has been at the top of our family wish list for a few years. This big multi-city trip was so fun. We saw Christmas markets, snowy villages, ice-skated in 3 cities, and loved loved loved train rides with gorgeous scenery. European travel is quickly becoming one of my favorite things with family-friendly towns, easy navigating with trains and so much history and beauty. Traveling internationally with kids can be daunting but with a little preparation and research and tips from other travelers, we had a successful trip!
This post covers our flights, itinerary, planning process, and international logistics such as using the subway, getting a phone card, and finding budget restaurants.
Read all of our European Christmas Market posts at the following links:
Planning our Itinerary
I love planning trips, especially through well-traveled places where there’s a ton of information to read through and make plans for. Many online blogs were really helpful! We were in each home-base for around 4 days and read numerous blogs and books. One tip for traveling with kids is take a 3-day best of guide and cut out half of it to make it actually realistic to manage in those same 3 days. Mix in some kid-focused/less touristy options like malls, playgrounds, hotel pool. We also took several day trips which felt like a lot of moving but our kids loved reading their new kindles on the trains and this was a great time for just chatting and reconnecting with gorgeous views.
Several months before, I sketched out our plan in excel and on google maps with a balance of activities, rest time, food, rest, and fun. We made sure to research how far areas were and tried to schedule several anchor points with a few optional activities so we didn’t overstuff our schedule.
Overview
Flying RT to Munich
We were able to use United points to fly for 63k points per person and flew a combination of United and Lufthansa planes.
Tips for Long Plane Rides
Sleeping on planes West to East:
- Plan to sleep! For the overnight red-eye flight to Europe, we emphasized that after dinner service, everyone was going to try and get some sleep. I gave each kid a dose of melatonin and they passed out pretty immediately. We packed these cheap pillows from Amazon (They came with eye masks!).
- On arrival, get outside and try to limit naps so you can readjust.
Activities for long flights East to West
- On the long flight, the kids were happy playing with the personal screen and alternating between coloring, reading, tv, games, and snacks. Ellie has been loving the Magic Treehouse books and when they were little, they used to love activities in the Magic Ink and small play pack coloring books (Amazon links). We have one Nintendo Switch that the kids love.
- For more on our favorite activities and tips for flying, see our post here.
Transportation in Europe
Train travel and public transportation is one of our favorite things about Europe. Everything is pretty straightforward and inexpensive.
In Munich, we used the MVGO app and bought daily unlimited family passes. One top tip for international travel is to download the city map to google so that it doesn’t continue to use data every time you load. It was also super easy to buy tickets for our day trips and 2 hour train to Salzburg, Austria at the end of our stay. The Bayern ticket is a family ticket that is a great deal for unlimited travel in Bavaria (Munich and surrounding areas) on regional trains and is good for Salzburg day trips or even one-way trips like ours.
In Salzburg, we had the salzburg card and it included public transport. From Salzburg’s main station, it was an easy 2 hour trip to the main Innsbruck station. On our trips between cities, we generally booked tickets the night before and were able to get really inexpensive tickets. The price for all 4 of us was 44 euro and it was a double-deck train (Ellie was so excited!)
In Innsbruck, we had the Innsbruck car for bus travel around the city. It was easy to get tickets back to Munich at the end of our stay.
I love how easy train travel is in Europe. We used the website Seat 61 to get some guidance but it was really straightforward. We mapped destinations using google maps and compared the time/cost/effort to use a taxi, train, bus, or walk. We used uber or the train depending on where/how far we were going. If you have little ones, it might be harder to use a taxi due to the car seat. If you plan on using a stroller on the subway, many have elevators, but be prepared to fold it and carry up stairs.
Eating in Germany and Austria
One of our hotels came with free breakfast, and we also stopped by grocery stores for easy cheap meals to start our day and snacks for the hotel room.
During the day, we tried to balance quick meals with sit-down meals. We didn’t do any true gourmet fancy meals but did have some excellent food. A few restaurants had kids menus or we would get entrees to share. We always say trips are for eating. We ate a wide variety of yummy foods at the Christmas markets including pretzels, cookies, fruit, brats, and more. At several German/Austrian restaurants, we loved ordering schnitzel and spaetzle. There are so many delicious things to eat!
Other International Logistics
Passport: Before you fly internationally, check those expiration dates on your passports! Note that some countries require your passport to valid for 3-6 months after your flight
Phone/Internet Have you heard of an e-sim card? Prior to our arrival, we bought an Orange e-sim card. For $40 each, we had a phone with data. The phone switched to the international sim without needing to stop by a store to physically put a sim in.
Language: We worked with the kids to know basic greetings and that’s about it. We just did our best to be polite and worked with the kids to say, “Hello good morning, Excuse me. Do you speak English?” instead of just rudely speaking English to people. Most of the people we interacted with at the airport, hotel and restaurants spoke very good English. What we have found is very helpful from our other international travels is the Google translate app. You can type in English and show the German translation or try to speak it.
Currency Exchange We had to use cash at several of the markets. We stopped at several banks and used our bank debit card to pull out the equivalent of $300 for some Euro.
More Christmas 2023-2024 Posts
Read all of our European Christmas Market posts at the following links:
