Italy or France with kids
Sep 4th, 2008, 06:37 AM
#1
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Italy or France with kids
We are trying to plan a trip for next June with friends from Germany. We have 5 kids between us under 10 years old.....would like our German friends to join us on vacation. Any suggestions on where in either Italy or France? We did Tuscany and loved it in May 2002.
Sep 4th, 2008, 08:23 AM
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THere is an awful lot to do with kids in Northern Italy. If you base yourself in someplace like Verona, there is Gardaland (big amusement park), gardens, Verona, Vicenza, and Venice to tour, and lots of other day trips. Plus the lakes aren't far from there.
Sep 4th, 2008, 12:38 PM
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Having been to both France and Italy with young children, I would always opt for Italy. Italians just love children and are extremely tolerant of them in restaurants and public places... Our experience in France was the complete opposite.
Sep 4th, 2008, 01:07 PM
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We've had very good experiences with both. The easy part about Italy was the food. The kids could find something they recognized literally everywhere. France was fab also, and we love French cuisine, but more of a challenge for kids when they had to decide what to order.
The only hostile restauranteur we've ever encountered -anywhere- was on the left bank. He was an angry Italian in Paris and did not welcome us ordering only two of his pizzas for five people. (Sheesh, it was 2:30pm and we only wanted a SNACK!) We were also told that children were not permitted to use the services unaccompanied. When I responded that I would be glad to go with my 10 year old if needed in French, he retorted something about me being Dutch (I'm from the US) trying to speak French.
Granted, my French was a bit rusty, and he spoke his French with an Italian accent, but I was coherent and grammatically correct!
One of our best trips was renting a house with a pool on a working farm in Tuscany some years ago and doing day trips from there. We also stayed a week in Sorrento in a rental we found on www.vrbo.com and that area had great daytrips also. Great beaches, water taxis, scenery, volcanoes, Capri, Ravello, Minori, Herculeneum and Pompeii kept us busy. Oh.... and the limoncello.... ahhhhh.
Sigh... we still love both countries and have taken the kids to both with wonderful experiences and memories.
The only hostile restauranteur we've ever encountered -anywhere- was on the left bank. He was an angry Italian in Paris and did not welcome us ordering only two of his pizzas for five people. (Sheesh, it was 2:30pm and we only wanted a SNACK!) We were also told that children were not permitted to use the services unaccompanied. When I responded that I would be glad to go with my 10 year old if needed in French, he retorted something about me being Dutch (I'm from the US) trying to speak French.
Granted, my French was a bit rusty, and he spoke his French with an Italian accent, but I was coherent and grammatically correct!
One of our best trips was renting a house with a pool on a working farm in Tuscany some years ago and doing day trips from there. We also stayed a week in Sorrento in a rental we found on www.vrbo.com and that area had great daytrips also. Great beaches, water taxis, scenery, volcanoes, Capri, Ravello, Minori, Herculeneum and Pompeii kept us busy. Oh.... and the limoncello.... ahhhhh.
Sigh... we still love both countries and have taken the kids to both with wonderful experiences and memories.
Sep 4th, 2008, 01:11 PM
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Our experiences with children in both countries were uniformly wonderful, though the Italians are a bit more demonstrative.
With that many kids, at those ages, I'd head for the Dordogne, where there is no end of things to keep both adults and kids fascinated and occupied.
With that many kids, at those ages, I'd head for the Dordogne, where there is no end of things to keep both adults and kids fascinated and occupied.
