Pretty much every time we mention to anyone that we’re planning an extended road trip through any part of Europe, we get wide eyes and lots of “wows”. It’s definitely true that a ‘road trip’ is MUCH less common on the European continent, but we somewhat vowed to prove the naysayers wrong. Just like people telling us WDW in Florida is too spread out to really park hop…the Cobbs can hit 3 parks in one day!

We’ve now been ‘on the continent’ for a year and a half and have undertaken 2 major road trips and tons of minor ones. With each one, the ‘why nots’ become more obvious…but it won’t stop us (Justin!).

ROADTRIP rationale

Our main reasons: cost and ease of travel (neither of which is really an overwhelming ‘win’ by conventional standards) and being able to conquer more on each trip.

Cost: is it cheaper? Probably not. I’m sure if we really compared all the fees, they would end up roughly the same. Flying or training somewhere requires 6 tickets on main mode of transportation, plus the secondary cost of transportation to and from airport or train station (sometimes 2 separate taxis or even the astronomical cost of a 6 seater rental car), followed by transportation throughout town while visiting, and that can add up quickly. Conversely, the cost adds up quickly also when filling up our American beast car with Euro-priced gas and paying tolls and buying country-specific driving vignettes, but it has the added advantage of ease of travel.

Ease of travel: is any travel with 6 people “easy”? I say no, especially when only 2 are adults. Buuuuuuut, our car has become an unintentional security blanket for me. First, we can pack whatever we want…and we do! I’m sure everyone has heard me complain about the lack of A/C. Well guess what? If you take your own car, you can bring FANS! We also have a roof bag, so if we really want to overpack and bring every item we own, we can shove it up there without paying any extra baggage fees (Ryanair, I’m talking to you!). Plus the car is a great storage locker – we can keep it in there or take out as needed. (Though our lack of pre-trip organization sometimes leads to frustrating thrashing through bags and unloading everything to get the things we need when we need them. The when we need them part is what I desperately need to master in terms of packing).

Another huge benefit to driving is food. I mean kids need snacks, right? 😂 We (over)pack a bag full of car snacks and a bag full of easy-to-cook non-perishables like spaghetti and canned soups. It makes for kind of lame meals, but it fits in the car, saves a decent amount of money wasted on food the kids don’t eat. A super bonus is that the weird local milk we buy isn’t refrigerated so it travels really well (tastes better when cold though 😂).

But the main reason we love to roadtrip Europe is to exponentially expand what we can see. Our road trips aren’t just a point A to point B – they’re really a complex journey. We don’t just head to one place, we get to stop and see 5 different cities or regions on the way. If we flew, we’d be confined to a much smaller area and would miss out on so much.

Why don’t I like to fly?

I’ve already mentioned two reasons I don’t love to fly with my family – cost (x6) and limited travel radius. But the biggest frustration for me is the logistical nightmare of navigating taxis, shuttles, trains, airplanes with uncooperative children and more bags than we have people to carry them. We made our grand voyage to Europe via a transatlantic cruise that had all kinds of weather changes and I wasn’t sure how to pack. So I overpacked. Luckily I arranged for a large van to get us into the city, but for us to leave London to head to Brussels, we required 2 cabs to get us to the train station then we each carried like 12 bags, me while pushing a stroller and cat-herding the others. From the taxis, we took a Eurostar train to Brussels, then a local train to our sponsor’s house. Thank God they met us before the local train. I don’t know if I could have gone up and down platforms with those bags and the kids one more time. I may have cried when I saw them because the travel was so exhausting and overwhelming. That alone may have forced me into my love affair with my own car. Obviously there’s also an issue with packing skills, but I just can’t quite figure it out. My idea of need to bring and want to bring are messed up.

Why don’t Europeans ROADTRIP?

I’m not a European and have done zero actual research, but my observations are as follows.

The cost: gas is a lot more expensive here. It’s usually €1.70/L, which comes out to roughly $6.70/gallon. Then add in the tolls I mentioned and the country-specific driving vignettes. Pricey.

Pictured below is one set of our driving “receipts” (the vignettes). Best part is that we literally had to scrape all of them off at the end of the trip when we got a new windshield 😢 and they weren’t salvageable. The price range is usually €30-€40 per sticker and without the sticker, a lovely €150 or so fine awaits you (AP!).

The cars: not built for long trips. Obviously not all cars, but a LOT of European cars are smaller, more compact and much less comfortable. I speak from experience here. Our other car is a local 😂. In the past few weeks, we’ve done some travel without kids or with one or two kids, so we chose to drive the euro car since it has a much easier time parking and it is work. When you get there, you feel like you’ve been riding a darn motorcycle for hours.

The roads: this one is multi-faceted. First the laws generally require that you drive in the right lane, which leads to a situation where there is NEVER a comfortable driving speed. The drivers are quick to flash, quick to pass, scarily quick to merge back over and there is a ridiculously large range of speeds between lanes.

The roads also vary per country, as do the signs and the languages. So one country may have decent roads but the next does not.

Questionable GPS guidance – even with a European GPS. We routinely run 2-3 different GPSs at one time and have still ended up in some hairy situations – and let me tell you, you don’t realize how unnerving it can be to be totally lost in a really foreign country (especially ones with really unreadable languages) until you’re there and you also don’t have cell service 😮.

The cell service: This one is probably just a Cobb issue and likely not a reason that Europeans don’t roadtrip (again I did ZERO research), but if they have the service we have then maybe. I’m pretty sure we have the worst service of any company in Europe. Even with the law they passed last year that prevented roaming charges, I still get crazy charges for data use, which I need when I’m in another country (well, I don’t need Facebook 😂). What’s great here is that when I’ve reached some limit, they just shut off my service all together, which is really helpful and only seems to happen when you are really lost and need Internet.

Last thoughts

As I write this pro-roadtrip blog, we are a finishing up a 12 day Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Czech trip. The trip has been an interesting one (along the lines of Lemony Snicket’s – series of unfortunate events) which one would think would have is question our choices to 1. Travel at all and 2. Travel by car, but that’s all for the next blog 😂.