First big trip to Europe with the whole family right after Christmas 2021. Flying in and out of Amsterdam, 12 days, still working on exact itinerary, but going to do a circle tour, Belgium, Cologne, Luxemburg, furthest away would probably be Frankfurt.

My initial plan was to just take trains everywhere, but with a group of 5, the ticket prices will add up quickly. In addition, it seems like most lodging for 5 is better in rentals (seems like most hotel rooms are for 2 or 3) which are outside city centers. Does it make more sense to just rent a car for 10 days and then return it to spend a couple of days in Amsterdam before we fly home?

I appreciate any advice.

Have you priced the car rental?

Are you sure the rentals are found (mostly) outside city centers in your destinations?

Welcome to Fodors. I personally (just me) would never plan a driving trip to places like Amsterdam, Belgium northwestern Germany . . in late December/early January. Snow, rain, cold, short days. Plus adding in the hassles driving into city centers from suburban/rural locations and trying to find parking etc.

What sorts of things are planning on seeing/doing?

(that would be a semi hectic itinerary even in summer with its loooong days and better weather)

I would suggest checking booking.com and selecting 5 people in the room before giving up on hotels. That website has made traveling with families MUCH easier than it used to be for finding family rooms in Europe. I did a quick search of Amsterdam with 5 and found numerous options. Some of them are apartments that use booking.com as well. But I have found European hotels have really stepped up to the plate on family style rooms over the last number of years...sometimes with single beds they'll bring in. Worth checking at least.

Price was around $700 without CDW, need to check on my coverage to see if I will need that.

No, I am not totally sure that rentals are outside the city centers. I am still searching around for lodging, but I did see most hotels in the cities were too small and we would need to rent more than one room.

I was hoping to figure out the car or train first and then we can figure out where we are going and where we are staying.

In addition to checking hotels or apartments in the center of towns, check for train passes, such as three day or five day non-consecutive days passes.

Lots of things to consider.
This trip is really soon to still be so open ended.
Have you booked flights? In and out of Amsterdam might not be the best choice when your itinerary is not even set yet. Multi-city (not two, one-way) might be cheaper and save travel time (giving more sight seeing time) than doing a circle.
That is a lot of moving around with five people, in winter.
Ages of travelers? What are the sights and activities you want to do?
Staying outside the cities may be a false economy because of cost (and time) of getting to places, parking, etc.
It will be dark early. Think seriously if the places you are planning on will be interesting to you and your family during the short days of winter. Is there enough to do and will those places be enjoyable if weather is bad? You list a couple of countries. True, they are small countries, but you can’t do countries in this time frame. You will have to pick places. Consider one or two really interesting places where you could do easy, interesting day trips, saving on transportation and not needing a car.

With 5 people and their luggage, you would need a minivan at least. Driving in small towns may be an issue with a large vehicle, some roads are very narrow.

I prefer to stay in the center of cities, if possible for optimum sightseeing. If you stay outside of the center, you lose a lot of time just getting back and forth and transportation costs and/or parking can really add up. Your itinerary sounds quite ambitious for 12 days. Every day that you are driving or changing locations, you lose quite a bit of valuable time that could be spent having fun. If you are arriving from an overnight flight, it may take a day or two to get over jet lag and feel somewhat back to normal. I usually try to spend several days minimally at my first location.

If your haven't purchased your plane tickets yet, try to buy open jaw tickets (flying into one city and flying out of another) so you don't need to backtrack.

Besides Amsterdam, which is terrific, what are you top two or three other locations? I think driving might make sense if you weren't going to be there during the winter. However, given the time of year, train tickets to a few locations might make more sense. Which locations in Belgium were you considering visiting? You mention wanting to see Cologne and Frankfurt. You could easily have a busy trip with just visiting Amsterdam, Cologne and Frankfurt or could consider possibly adding in one more location. Much depends on what you hoped to see and do in each location.

Wow! Thanks for all the replies, you gave me quite a bit to think about. To answer some of the questions:

Flights are booked, I probably should have done open jaw, but on short notice I found the best I could. Around the holidays, prices seem to vary from $500 to $3000 for economy.

The family is two adults, two boys in their 20's and one that is 15, we have a minivan at home but I was hoping to squeeze everyone in a full size car for the trip (dad says pack light!). The distances don't seem totally terrible to sit 3 in the back seat.

Essentially the trip is to see our son who moved to Bonn for graduate school, but we are hoping to see some things while we are there. We do plan on visiting again while he is there so we don't need to see everything on this trip. For this trip we are hoping to get a feel of the area, visit a cathedral, museum, castle, there are a few Christmas markets that seem to be open after the 25th, a night time canal boat trip in Amsterdam looks cool. We don't have to see Frankfort and/or Cologne, they just seem in easy driving/train distance. I have one friend who said we must visit Burge. I am open to suggestions. Especially where to spend NYE! (Remember the 15 year old, can't be too wild

We live in the upper Midwest, so driving in snow is pretty normal. However, I would feel more comfortable on the trains and other public transportation, I am just worried that it would be way more expensive, which is really the reason while I posted the question. If we could do train travel at close to the same price, I would pick that. Even if I did get the car, I would probably park it and train/bus into any big cities that we are going.

Thanks again for the help!

Hi SneakedInn, Â use bahn.com to work out prices and routings for train journeys. 2nd class is just fine on all the national railways of those countries. Agree that you are taking a risk by driving at that time of year, black ice is no fun. Â Also - if you are driving on autobahns the scenery isn't all that special, often there are walls to the roads so that you can't see much beyond your road itself. Â Travelling by train, even the would-be driver can enjoy the scenery. Â Ten days on the ground is not much. With likely bad weather, I would pick bigger cities to visit (museums, restaurants, churches, lots of cafés to duck into). Â Maybe a selection from Amsterdam - Antwerp - Brussels - Aachen - Cologne - Bonn, but you will have to weed out 2 or 3 of those according to your tastes. Â Can you fly home open jaw out of Frankfurt so you don't have to backtrack?

Lavandula
Â

Apologies for the weird formatting, I just tried to edit it out but it came back! Sorry, I just saw your flights are set in stone, so I guess no open jaw, which means you must make time for a return journey (Bonn - Amsterdam is an OK journey, about 4 hours). Amsterdam should take up a few days of your time, it's a good destination.

I would leave out Luxembourg for now; perhaps some time you can do the middle Rhine Valley and Mosel, in which case Luxembourg starts to make sense (Luxembourg City is just near Trier, on the Mosel, but it is cumbersome to get to from Amsterdam or Brussels by train.

Lavandula

Yes, I agree that 5 people can squeeze into a full size car. But, won’t everyone have a small to midsize suitcase and a carryon? Check with AutoEurope what full size cars they offer then check how large the trunks are to determine if the luggage will fit.

I am not trying to discourage you from driving! 😄. I drive a rental car on all of my trips but I travel solo so room is typically not an issue…. except for that one time when my luggage wouldn’t fit in the trunk and had to ride in the passenger seat next to me! LOL!

Hi SneakedInn,

As you do your cost comparisons, don't forget to add in the extra costs of driving a car. Many hotels, particularly city hotels, do not offer parking, or charge around 10€ or more per night for parking, so make sure you note it (some city apartments also do not offer parking). If you are touring in the car, you'll need to find and pay for parking wherever that is. And finally, gas is quite expensive; I think it is now almost $6 per gallon.

Generally, driving in Europe is a decent choice for seeing the countryside or villages, but if you are going to be in cities, cars can be a disadvantage.

Have fun as you plan!

s

I have done five people in a car rental in Europe. Twice. You need a minivan no doubt. But also we didn't stick just to cities. If you are only interested in visiting cities then you are not really taking advantage of the independence of a car rental.

Any car your rent must have winter tyres on it for Germany, and a green umweltzone sticker. Whilst a rental in Amsterdam may have winter, or all season, tyres on it it almost certainly won't have an umweltzone sticker, which you would need for cities in Germany. You will also need to register the vehicle for the low emission zones in Belgian cities.

You should also keep a firm eye on Covid developments and any extra restrictions imposed on travel between these countries, and on the recommendations of your own government regrading travel to them, given that at this point in time they all have rising numbers of cases. Things will hopefully improve, but I wouldn't bet on it.
You will all need to be fully vaccinated as well. Many states in Germany no longer accept negative tests. They are debating changing the rules here in the Netherlands as well, though it seems unlikely to happen here.
At the moment it is not possible to have your foreign vaccines put on the Dutch app to give you a QR code for entry into restaurants, museums etc. I don't know if the Belgians or Germans have the possibility to do that.

The only five seaters with room for five carry ons (Not checked bags) are going to be station wagons or minivans. Either is usually more expensive than a smaller car.

Factor in fuel. Even if European cars are more efficient it adds up.

Cars can make sense if you're going off the beaten path but point to point city centre to city centre take the train.

I have rented a station wagon (Ford Mondeo) that comfortably fit 5 people without luggage but would have been very tight /impossible if we'd tried to fit all our luggage in. Cost through AutoEurope was no more than a sedan. Squishy nylon duffel bags you can compress into spaces but any suitcase that has a rigid or even semi-rigid shape - not gonna fit all of yours even if you "pack light"....

For us it worked as we had staggered arrivals / departures and stayed in one location the entire time so never had 5 people + luggage. We used it for many day trips

https://www.autoevolution.com/cars/f...15.html#agal_0
check out something similar in a parking lot at home and you'll see...

As for driving, since you are from the north, I'd have no concern myself. Driving in winter in Europe is not really any different than driving in the US. You stay off the roads during an active snowstorm, reduce speeds if roads are wet, and generally use the same winter driving common sense you do at home. Every winter car rental I've had in Germany (numerous) has always come with snow tyres...

Driving costs also include tolls.

Michelin.com can provide an idea of what driving from point to point would cost in fuel and tolls.

I enjoy road tripss as much (or likely more) than many travelers (check out my profile photo ) And I do understand wanting to save $/€. My main concerns other than weather are -- 1) You will not want a car IN any of the cities on your itinerary. A car is a real liability in almost any European city. 2) in most cities you'll likely be parking on the periphery and taking public transport anyway to get into the city centres. 3) If you all can limit yourselves to a 21 inch rollaboard and small personal item each, then you can ft in a minivan or large estate car (station wagon) or SUV, but anything smaller won't work.

I'd plan on renting apartments or ApartHotels (like Citadines) in city centers. You would have kitchens so you can save money by preparing a few of your meals. Yes, you'd have the costs of train tickets -- but a car is expensive too with parking/petrol/tolls.