The summer of 2024 saw us embark on our European family road trip from Leicester to Croatia and back. Read on to find out how the final eight days of the 25 day adventure panned out as we visited Slovenia, Austria, Germany and France on our way home.
We are a family of six with the kids aged 17, 13 and 9 year old twins. The route for this trip home was largely influenced by three ‘anchor points’ on the map of places that we all really wanted to visit. These were Lake Bled 🇸🇮, Neuschwanstein Castle 🏰 🇩🇪 and a champagne vineyard 🍇🍾 near Rheims 🇫🇷.
After an amazing week’s holiday with friends, staying on the beach in Trogir, Croatia, we were ready for the next adventure on the journey home. The route and stops had been well planned out over the previous six months and we were all looking forward to exploring new places, countries and tourist attractions.
You can see an overview of our whole road trip in the article below and find links to posts detailing how we planned the trip and got on in places like Efteling, Bamburg, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and at the Miskolc thermal cave spa.
- Slovenia
- Lake Bled
- Lake Bohinj
- Austria
- Germany
- Neuschwanstein
- Heidelberg
- France
- Aÿ-Champagne
- Completing The Road Trip
Slovenia
With the car tightly packed with children and our holiday essentials we headed off on a Sunday morning for the long drive to our next destination in the Slovenian Alps where we had booked a mountain cabin for two nights.
This was a long day in the car covering about 495km through the beautiful countryside of Croatia and across the border into our eighth country of the trip. after a few brief comfort stops we made it to Slovenia’s capital city Ljubljana by mid-afternoon and stopped for an explore and some food.
Ljubljana
A small city of just 300,000 people we found Ljubljana be charming and enjoyed a a long walk through the old town, across the famous bridges and up the steep path to the hilltop castle before stopping for dinner at a pizza restaurant back in the old town.
We finished off the day with a shorter 50km drive north from the city to our rural mountain retreat in Zgornja Dobrava.
The accommodation was in an idyllic setting on a meadow surrounded by mountain vistas and was just what we needed to relax after a long day travelling. We were booked for two nights and spent our second day visiting Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj which were an easy drive away.
Lake Bled
We spent the morning in the town of Bled where we sampled local Bled Cakes and took a rowing boat trip to a small island. The water of the lake is really clear and spectacular shades of blue.
It was another hot day and after the boat trip we drove a short distance through the mountains to a larger lake, in a more rural location, which had a beach and swimming area.
Lake Bohinj
Lake Bohinj was really picturesque, surrounded by mountains and we all enjoyed some open water swimming, relaxing in the beautiful scenery and playing beach volleyball with some of the locals.
Austria
The following day was another long day of travel which took us across the borders into Austria 🇦🇹 , then into the Italian 🇮🇹 Dolomites ⛰️ back into Austria 🇦🇹, over the Brenner Pass finally arriving at a hotel in the Austrian Alps close to the German border.
We had one night booked at the hotel which was at the base of cable car and ski lift stations in the small village of Ehrwald. We had managed to book a room for six which was a bit tight but fine for one night.
The alpine views from the hotel were stunning and we enjoyed breakfast while watching wild deer strolling along the steep slopes.
After a short walk up the steep mountain slope to enjoy the panoramic views, we headed off for our next stop, Neuschwanstein Castle 🏰 a short hop across the border into southern Germany.
Germany
On the outward part of the road trip we drove the entire width of Germany from Holland 🇳🇱 to Czechia 🇨🇿 stopping for a night close to Cologne in the west and Bamberg in the east.
On the route back home we had booked two nights in Heidelburg to rest and soak up more German culture. The first stop was Neuschwanstein Castle.
Neuschwanstein Castle 🏰
Built in the 1800s on the edge of the German Alps the location and architecture is stunning. Walt Disney is said to have inspired his own Fairytale Castle after a visit here. It did not disappoint!
From the car park it was a long, steep walk to the castle entrance but there was also a tourist bus if you couldn’t manage the incline. We didn’t go inside the castle but continued our hike around the outside of the walls to the ravine, waterfalls and rope bridges for an unforgettable visit.
Heidelberg
After a long drive from Neuschwanstein we arrived in Heidelburg, western Germany, at a modern Accor Group hotel. On our ‘rest day’ we explored all that Heidelburg had to offer including the Castle, funicular, river, shops and traditional German cuisine.
After weeks of hot and sunny weather, it rained for most of the day and we all got soaked walking to and around the castle.
Highlights of the trip included one of the world’s largest barrels in the wine cellar, the museum of pharmacies and medicine both in the castle and the funicular ride to the top of a mountain / big hill ⛰️.
Jackson (13) and I decided to take the path down the mountain to see if we could beat the funicular. We won 🏆 …but about a quarter of the way down I realised I had made a mistake. Slipping on steep stone steps in a rainstorm, running and jumping down the path caused my ankle to ache sharply, 18 months after surgery on a double fracture! We were lucky that we both got down in one piece. Lesson learnt!!!
The following day we set off for the final part of our European road trip and in many ways one that Susie and I were looking forward to the most – a stay in a the Champagne region and a tour of a Champagne Maison and vineyard 🍇🥂🍾
France
Aÿ-Champagne
We had two nights booked in an Airbnb in the small village of Aÿ-Champagne which is about ten miles south of the city of Reims.
We soon found that Aÿ-Champagne is not your typical French rural village. After arriving in the afternoon we went for a stroll and passed six or seven grand residences which were the homes of the famous Champage producers including Moet, Collet and Bollinger.
We spent the morning in Reims enjoying the gothic architecture of the cathedral and the 2024 Olympic displays along the main shopping streets before heading back to catch a bus to nearby Epernay where we had pre-booked a tour of the Mercier Champagne house.
Highlights of the trip included an electric train tour of the underground tunnels where thousands of champagne bottles are stored, another massive barrel (two massive barrels in three days …who’d have thought that?) and of course – the tasting 🥂
We really enjoyed our stay in Aÿ-Champagne, an area of France that we’d not visited before, and would love to go back one day.
The next day was the 25th and final day of our road trip and, whilst we had an amazing time, we were all looking forward to getting home. We had an uneventful drive to Calais where we took the Euro Tunnel to Folkestone and then drove the last stretch to Leicestershire and home 🏠 . After 3,500 miles of driving, I was ready for another holiday!!!
Completing The Road Trip ✅
After months of planning we finally completed our 25 day adventure which took us to ten countries, over thirteen border crossings, six capital cities and a total of 3,500 miles driving.
Looking back, the road trip was fantastic. Having such a long period of time off work, together as a family, was really special. We all experienced new places, cultures and cuisines; saw amazing sites and landscapes, many castles and cathedrals; swam in the sea, pools, lakes and thermal spa caves; went to a theme park and a water park; snorkelled; tackled an inflatable assault course in the sea; spent time with good friends; travelled on autobahns, trams, underground and overground trains, bendy-buses, trolley buses, boats, taxis and a funicular! It was a real adventure.
We hope that the trip will inspire the kids to want to travel when they are older and to be open-minded and welcoming to people of different cultures.
I can see us doing many more family road trips in the future although with work commitments, these are likely to be shorter in duration!
If you have made it to the end of this post then many thanks for taking the time to read on. I hope to inspire other families that holidays don’t always have to be a package deal or an all inclusive resort. There are so many beautiful places to visit that are worth the effort to travel to on our doorstep in Europe. The memories made will hopefully last a lifetime.
Holiday Run
When away from home I love to get out and go for a run around the sites or local countryside. I run a lot at home around the same few routes so it is really good to go for a run with more interesting sites to see along the way.
With a lot of travelling and site-seeing on this leg of the trip I only managed another two runs – one in the mountains in Slovakia and another through the champagne vineyards in France.
You can find details of my route on Strava on the following link –
About Us
After the shock of finding out that we were expecting twins in 2015, one of the first things that we realised was that …we’re gonna need a bigger car!
We’re a family of six with two girls and two boys aged 18, 14 and 10 year old twins.
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