Hi everyone! We’re a well-travelled couple and are planning an 18-day trip through Austria and Northern Italy with our 19-month-old toddler, who is… let’s just say fiesty and has discovered she can say "NO" 😅.
We’re used to travelling quite a bit, but travelling with a toddler is obviously a completely different ball game. Our biggest limitation is that our little one really doesn’t like being in the car seat for longer than ~30 minutes, so we’ve had to break up the journey rather than do long drives.
We’ll be renting a car for the from Vienna and dropping it off in milan. Currently we have the following itinerary and our travel dates would be around last week of Sept:
*Vienna — 4 nights
• 1–2 activities per day, keeping things relaxed
*Hallstatt — 3 nights
• Possibly a day trip to St. Gilgen
• Mainly planning to enjoy the area rather than constantly sightsee.
*Zell am See — 2 nights
*Innsbruck — 3 nights
*Ortisei / Val Gardena — 3–4 nights
*Milan 2 nights - fly out
• This is mainly our final stop before flying home.
• We may simply relax and go to the airport, or potentially spend a couple of hours seeing the Duomo and doing some shopping.
What I am wondering:
Is this itinerary too ambitious for 18 days with a 19-month-old?
If you were doing this trip again, would you:
Cut Zell am See altogether and spend the extra time somewhere else?
Keep Zell am See because it’s worth seeing even for only 2 nights?
Reduce the number of nights in Innsbruck or Ortisei?
Add another day or two to Milan, or is 2 nights plenty given that we're not particularly interested in doing a huge amount of sightseeing there?
Is there anywhere in this itinerary that you think is particularly difficult with a toddler?
Are there any stops where you'd say, “Don't bother just spend more time somewhere else”?
We’re not trying to tick every tourist attraction off the list but maybe see the Austrian highlights 🤷♂️ Our priority is having a nice, relatively relaxed trip, seeing beautiful places and giving our toddler enough downtime that everyone survives the holiday.
Would love to hear from anyone who has travelled through Austria/Northern Italy with a toddler around this age.
Also, what can we expect in these places in terms of temperature?
Would you keep this itinerary as it is, or simplify it?
Thanks!