We are a family of 5-3 teenagers. Will be flying into London then across to France. Do not know whether to buy eurail passes or lease car for 8 weeks.Will be going to Belgium,Holland, Germany, Czech Republic,Austria,Italy,Switzerland,France then back to London end of November, December, January.

..Whoa! That is a lot of ground to cover...My inclination is to say a car, but before I say anything you need to do more planning...just a few suggestions. minimun stays in any place should be 3-4 nights. With your trip, I would suggest several 1 week stays with day trips (can rent appts which is a real advantage with your family). Hotel rooms are small in Europe and you will almost certainly need 2 rooms/nt for your family. In big cities you will not want a car. It will be parked while you sight see. If you just do cities, you may not want a car. When you have more specifics, just write back.

Hi V,

Have you ever spent 8 weeks on the road before?

A railpass might work for you. Enter your itinerary at www.railsaver.com and click "only if it saves money".

I think both Renault and Peugeot have good lease plans.

You will want a midsize or larger.

If you will be going from city to city, I think trains will be better than cars. You won't want to drive in the cities, and parking is expensive.

I think that you will want to limit your stops to 2 towns per country.

Hope this helps.

With 5 of you I would suggest a car, but you will need a van. We leased a Peuguot for 8 weeks one time and loved it. I would get a diesel manual car for best mileage.

I think Peugeot have a thing for non EU citizens when they want a car for 3 months where you buy and sell back for a fixed price. Might be worth a look see

How much will you be moving around within each of those 8 countries?

If you are staying 7-10 days in a single city, seems the train with point-to-point tickets would be OK. If you are moving every day or two, either a train pass or a car might work better.

five people, 8 weeks, 9 countries spread over a HUGE area -- in the dead of winter??

Winter weather can be a huge factor on whether driving is the best -- or even possible - in some areas.

Your plan would be very agressive even in the spring/summer and in winter could be really difficult.

I'd personally cut back to the 5 (at very most) countries you most want to visit. And driving or taking trains are not your only options. There are low cost airlines between most European cities that can be cheaper than trains or cars.

Unless you are spending the majority of your time out in the countryside - a car is probably not your best choice since driving/parking in most cities is difficult to nearly impossible. You can rent cars for a few days in specific locations for day trips and touring around.

meant to add - driving the distances you plan would use up a great deal of your time, so using trains or planes between regions will be a big time saver.

I usually take the train for my business trips within Europe - so I know the train system and I appreciate it.

Trains are okay if you want to hop from one big city to the next.

But for you, I recommend renting a minivan. You are much more flexible, have the chance to visit small towns and see something of the countryside.

You have so much time, so you can make a relaxed itinerary. My tip: Try not to see as many countries as possible but take some time to explore destinations in depth, leaving the "beaten path".

It sounds like a van makes the most sense for what you sem to have planned.

But - as a first step I think you need to do a day by day itinerary. Not that you must stick to it like glue - but if you don;t at least start with one you will have no clue how much territory you can cover and still actually see anything.

I'm sure you don;t want to spend 75% of your time just driving from one place to another - rather than see anything. So - I would put together a list of places you can spend 3/4 nights - from which you can take day trips if necessary.

Also - a car will not hold 5 people plus luggage. Cars in europe are smaller - and even here 5 plus luggage won;t fit in almost any car - you will definitely need a van - preferably manual if you can drive one.

And don;t underestimate driving times. Many of the areas you'll be going through get a lot of snow - and although major roads are usually kept well cleaned, minor roads can be very slow - and there's no way you'll be able to keep up 80 or 90mph on the highways. Check out mappy.com or viamichelin.com for info (but realize they use speed limits in timing - and in bad weather it will take much longer).

You might want to buy/sell a car, although for the size of your family, it probably would have to be a Renault Grand Scenic or larger: $2500 + for eight weeks (http://www.renaultusa.com/). You could pick up the car in Calais and return in Paris at the end of your grand tour, thus saving pick-up and drop-off fees charged when picking up the car in foreign countries. But you should check the price of a buy/sell against some type of rail pass. Given the amount of traveling you plan on doing, comparing the car option with point-to-point train tickets might be too much of a pain, and it assumes a fully formed itinerary.

Your trip does not necessarily cover too much ground. On my first ten-week grand tour of Europe, I picked up a car in Wolfsburg, drove to Berlin (through E. Germany), and then Salzburg, Yugoslavia (to Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Mostar, Cetinje, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Split), Italy (Venice, Lago di Garda, Florence, Cinque Terre, Lake Como), the Rhone valley of Switzerland, the French Alps to Nice, some of the Provence, the Gorges de l'Aveyron and Gorges du Tarn, the Pyrenees south of Lourdes, up to the Dordogne, the Loire, the Mont St. Michel, Paris and returned the car for shipment in Antwerp. I still have nice memories of that trip taken 40 years ago.

Reluctant though I am in general about advising American tourists to rent a car, your particular configuration (ie 5 people) makes the van option more attractive. With one particular caveat, pointed out by Michael: it would be more cost-effective if the vehicle were picked up and dropped off on the Continent, and not in Britain. 1) You would avoid the cost of taking the car through Eurotunnel or a ferry (though the latter are quite cheap off season); 2) you would avoid general British higher prices (about 30 % higher than on the continent); 3) you would get a left hand drive. I suggest you book a cheap Ryanair flight ex London to, say, Ostend (£25 all taxes included), and start your motor European odyssey from there on. But parking in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, Milan and the like, will be a nightmare. Just a reminder: gas is currently the equivalent of $6.5 a gallon in Europe.

..Michael, you didn't have 3 teens in tow then did you? BIG difference. My first trip to Europe without parents was 4 months (hitchhiking and public transportation) 9 countries only but the trip was unforgetable. We did not "see a lot" by some peoples's standards but saw a lot of what was seen.

travelbunny,

I amke no assumptions about the teens, that's for the family to judge. On the other hand, they might be less interested in museums and similar cultural venues, which might allow for a shorter stay than we would find acceptable in some cities. If they were involved in the planning, it might help.

Thanks everyone for the info.We were going to catch the train to Dover then onto Calais by ferry,maybe go from there by train to Belgium,Holland,Germany,Czech,Austria and into Venice over 3 weeks.Then spend 3 weeks in Italy(1weekeach in north,middle and south)Then into France(including 5days skiing(undecided as to whether we do this in Chamonix or somewhere else)gor 2 weeks finishing in Paris .Our boys are 18,16&13.The cost of eurailpasses and car lease are about the same(AUD)its the extras with the car that you have that it might be better to do a combination of car/train.Would the pass still be agood option or are we better off just buying the tickets as we go

If passes cost about the same as a buy/sell option, I would go with the passes since the car option does not include the cost of fuel and parking in large cities.