Hello!

We have only been here just over two months and would like to travel the surrounding areas with our two kids, 8 & 5 years. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to go for the Feb holidays, we just want a nice family friendly hotel with pool, kids club and good food. We would like to travel by train for no more than 4 hours...recomendations please???

Check out this thread for some great tips:

Zürich: taking the train to ski

SBB Snow N Rail is here:

http://railaway.sbb.ch/english/snow-n-rail/

Also: http://en.graubuenden.ch/ski-snowboa...l?L=2&season=2
You can get to virtually any part of CH within 4 hours on train.

For kids that age I cannot recommend Arosa highly enough and the train journey there is fantastic. I may even have said so in the other thread linked.

Have a great time.

Arosa is great - but brace yourself for how much it will cost - and booking now for Feb 2012 is OK - 2011 will be challenging

They want to take a holiday during the ski week off school. They didn't say they wanted to ski.

I would look at holidays in Europe, like http://www.centerparcs.ch/CD/CH/home

Maybe ask your local travel agent?

Thanx for your replys.

We are not bothered if its a ski resort or not...just want a chill out holiday with the family after a very stressful past six months. We have never booked a holiday from here before and just wanted any helpful advice to get us going!

Cheers C

There are whole chains of 'kid hotels' or 'family resort' places - but for the price/weather I'd be thinking Italy or France or even Germany and Austria.

We just had a week in Barcelona and everything was so cheap! We got two rooms at an ordinary hotel, everything was new and fresh, 55 Euro per room...

Kind of depends on your budget... but if you want childcare then that of course will limit the options a bit...and most ski resorts have kids clubs, although often you pay an extra fee per day, and the older kids are assumed to be out skiing or snowboarding...

There are several options and it depends a little on what you want to do and on your budget.

One option would be exploring Switzerland. As you life close to Zurich that could easily be done from home which means you could spend the nights at home and spend the money safed (meaning not spent for hotels) on other things. Depending on what you've already done you could go to see Lucerne (http://www.luzern.com/en/welcome.cfm?), the Zoo in Zurich (http://www.zoo.ch/xml_1/internet/en/intro.cfm), the Technorama in Winterthur (http://www.technorama.ch/en), the children museum in Baden (http://www.kindermuseum.ch), the Alpamare in Pfäffikon (http://www.alpamare.ch). You could go ice-skating in Zurich or Zug or you could "to the mountains" for some walking or to go sledging. There are many option within easy access (even by train). For children I would suggest Braunwald or Elm maybe Hoch-Ybrig or Flumserberg (but check if there is enough snow for sledging). Braunwald has a nice Kinderhotel more info http://www.maerchenhotel.ch/maerchenhotel/english.php. But note: all these places might get crowded as everyone is on vacation...

Another option would be to go outside of Switzerland. Just walk into one of the Hotelplan (should also offer Migros-Reisen or M-Budget Ferien) or Kuoni or TUI travel agencies they might be able to provide you with ideas. Also Aldi and Coop have flyers with offers.

Enjoy the first holiday here!