Dear all I am planning to visit Swiss. and Italy on May with my wife and two kids one is 1 and 7 months old and the other is 8 months. I will arrive to Geneva and I will fly back home from Geneva too. The trip will be for 15- 20 days long. I need your suggestion to plan my trip. I would like to visit Geneva, Interlaken, Milan and Rome. I need your help to know how long should I stay on each city and where to go if it's possible. I love lakes and shopping.

Instead of staying right in Geneva, I suggest the towns along Lac Leman outside the city... Lausanne, Vevey, and Montreux are about 1 hour by train easily reached from the Geneva airport. They are very beautiful and right on the lake.

suze thanks for your quick respond.

what is your suggest about how long to stay on these towns? how long do you suggest to stay on Interlaken? on my way to Italy do I have to go back to Geneva

It is not easy to travel in Italy with small children. It is hard to take the trains, the stations are very old and the trains are slow, and inside cities like Rome, it is hard because the streets are very small and there are a lot of cars and motorcycles.

Since you have small children, it is better than you not move around too much. I would suggest that you spend 3 days in Milano and if the weather is nice, make a day visit to Bellagio (on Lago di Como) for lunch.

Something else you could consider is that the lake town of Stresa on Lago Maggiore is on the train line that goes from Switzerland to Milano. You could stay in Stresa, on the lake, for 3 nights, and take a day trip into Milano (one hour away).

You might consider going to Lugano, perhaps instead of Milano.

But in general I think you need to be realistic about how hard it is to move around Italy with small children.

You say "I would like to visit Geneva, Interlaken, Milan and Rome."

What is it about Geneva and Milan that attracts you? Geneva has not much to offer, it is a busy city with a bit of an old center and some parks and pretty lakeside promenades, but nothing special, although the region, along the lake and towards the mountains (French Alps and Swiss Alps) is very rewarding.

On the French side of the lake look up names like Annecy, Chambéry, Thonon, and on the Swiss side Vevey, Clarens, Montreux, Glion, Caux, Chillon. The city of Lausanne is awkward to maneuvre with babies, it is on a hillside, lots of ups and downs and not much to see unless you have specific plans, like the Olympic Museum maybe.

Milan also has some specific targets but on the whole is not a city where schlepping two babies would be rewarding.

So I suggest you narrow down exactly what specific targets you wish to visit - maybe the Duomo in Milan - take the elevator from the outside up onto the roof (costs a few Euros, the stairs are free but would kill you with the babies...), bring your camera, it's great up there.

Decide if you want to see the last supper in Milan, and whatever else, you can't just walk around like you can in the center of Florence or Venice and expect to be impressed, Milan is a large business city, more like Frankfurt in that regard.

Then use Google maps or www.viamichelin.com (select the pedestrian option) for distances and maps, use the train site www.ferroviedellostato.it for schedules and fares in Italy - from Geneva use the Swiss train site www.rail.ch.

About Interlaken: It is a spread-out town between two lakes, situated on the flat in a pretty location but it is not itself the attraction - the attractions around there are the numerous mountain valleys and mountain peaks in all directions, some expensive and famous, others not so much but often just as rewarding. So Interlaken is a good place to stay because it is on the flat, with lots of hotels and restaurants, easy to get around, with two train stations and with boats going off onto the two lakes - a good home base and springboard for day excursions.

There is no way we can suggest how much time to spend there, some people make it weeks and weeks and still never get to see everything in the surrounding areas. You need to watch some travel DVDs and read some travel books and pinpoint exactly what targets interest you in the region, then you can get a handle on your planning.

Look up the region itself, it is called Berner Oberland - lots has been written about it.

If you have specific mountain excursions in mind, it might pay to stay closer, like in Wengen or Mürren, to save the travel time in the morning from Interlaken down below.

Also look at www.niesen.ch - it is a mountaintop that provides stunning views 360 degrees, and it is easy to get up there with a cograil contraption. You take the train to Spiez, change to the local train for two stops to Mülenenen, and walk to the base station across the street and up you go. On the other side of the lake Thun is the www.niederhorn.ch, also an impressive mountaintop with gorgeous views onto the "big ones".

So do your research until you know exactly what you want to visit in those locations, so you will make a beeline for each rather than getting lost strolling around with two babies, that would be rough, and - as Zeppole said - almost impossible in some of the old places where narrow sidewalks, swarms of other people around you, and traffic make life unpleasant.

Limit your choices, because you will have your hands full with the babies and their needs. So a good day might just be a ride on the public boats from Interlaken to, say, Thun, a stroll to the castle, a bit of lunch along the way, and another boat back. They serve drinks and snacks on the boats, and the views you'll soak in are gorgeous.

Are you sure you want to include Rome? Milan paired with Venice would make more sense.

I've never been to Interlaken. I could happily spent a couple weeks in Vevey and Montreux, and have many times.

Timing each place is up to you. With two tiny kids I would not want to move around quite as often as you are planning.

I am planning a similar trip at the end of April and into May. I decided that we would visit Rome first, before the weather heated up, then go to Switzerland, hoping to catch some warm weather there (we visited Switzerland in May a few years ago and the weather was good).

My suggestion would be that you get an open-jaw, or multiple destinations, airline ticket and fly into Rome, then fly home from Geneva. The cost is comparable to a round trip flight, and you save yourself the time and expense of a long journey back to where you originally started.

We plan to spend about 12 days in Rome and Naples. I don't travel with kids, and I think yours are so young they would not benefit from the trip, but would be a burden on you. I'm lucky that we had grandparents who were eager to take the young kids when we were traveling.

I know Florence is good for shopping and I haven't yet been to Milan, but I think it would be good for shopping, but not good for kids. An alternative would be to stay in one of the lake towns, such as Lugano, but you will have to decide between shopping (Milan or Florence) and lake scenery. Almost any train up into Switzerland will be scenic. I think Interlaken would be good for kids a few years older than yours, but I really like Lauterbrunnen, a village in a nearby valley that has wonderful scenery and access to some peaks that are memorable.

From that area, I would take a train to Geneva, but the normal routing is not very scenic, so I would route myself through Spiez, then the Gstaad area and Montreaux (possibly staying a couple of days near there), then on to Geneva. Geneva is a staid, diplomatic city, but there is plenty to see on day trips. I would stay in Geneva itself to make it easy to get to the airport for your return flight.

Enjoy your trip.

zeppole, AalaiLiama,suze,clevelandbrown

Thanks for your useful suggestion. I appreciate for all of you.

after reading your comments I might change my plan but I have some questions as following:

1- I am planning to rent a car during my trip. do you suggest me to rent a car for the whole trip? or It's better to use the trains?

2-if I have to stay on Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen how many days to suggest that I stay on each?

3-If I stayed on Lauterbrunnen do I need a car there?

4- How long is the distance between Lauterbrunnen and Interlaken?

5- If I have to choose between Lauterbrunnen and Lugano which one you suggest me to stay on?

6- My wife says lets visit all of the three, stay couple of days on each of them since Lugaon near Italy which mean that we can have day trip to Milan for shopping.

Thanks a lot for your support. I got a lot of new places that I never know about.

You need to take a good look at the entire Berner Oberland region - get a good map from google maps or from www.viamichelin.com or from your local library, and google the words Berner Oberland and Bernese Oberland. It is a complex region of valleys and mountain tops, some are accessible and cost a lot to get up on, others less so.

Lauterbrunnen and Interlaken are in the same region, only a 20-minute train ride (slow trains!) away from each other, less than 10 miles. The big difference: Interlaken is a broad town on the flat between two lakes (as if you had not already guessed that from the name), with two train stations, lots of hotels and restaurants and shops. It looks up at the mountains but is not really in the mountains, so it is easy to get to and to get around, that's why all the hotels, of course.

Lauterbrunnen is in the valley, near Wengen, another popular village for people who prefer to stay in the valley, a bit closer to some of the mountain destinations they want to visit.

So it makes no sense to stay in one place then move hotel to another place so close nearby - packing and unpacking and checking out and checking in is more trouble than it's worth, just pick one and stay for the duration.

Make your choice only after looking at a good map and after reading more about the region - you need to be better informed than by the snippets we give you here.

Choose which daytrip targets you want to visit, and then choose your location accordingly. From Interlaken you have the choice of two lakes with boats going everywhere, but you get to Interlaken from Lauterbrunnen very quickly, and vice-versa, so staying in either location will work.

Go to YouTube and Flickr and Google Images and look at some pictures other people have taken, and videos, and rent some travel DVDs from your library and look at some of the many photo books that have been published about the Bernese Oberland, When you spend that much money to go to an expensive place like that, it is worth spending the extra effort to look things up first.

No, a car will not be much help, less so the more you go into the mountain valleys - in some places you are not even allowed to take your car.

Lugano is a nice enough city by a lake near the Italian border. But don't stay in the city, stay by the lake. It is indeed not far from there to Milan.

There are prettier locations down there, like some on the other, longer lake, the Lago Maggiore: Ascona or Brissago or, just across the border, Stresa with the very pretty Borromean islands. The fast trains from Stresa make a daytrip to Milan very easy. Again, look them up and see for yourself.