Driving from Venice avoiding France

[bolidemichael]

We (wife, two children eight and twelve) have a few days to kill and are looking for ideas to stop over and see/experience things.

The family is good with distances and I'd like to perhaps see something mountainous (the Eagle's Neat is closed until mid-May), a town/city and maybe a museum. I'm open to Stuttgart and the MB museum, which I've been to before but I haven't been to the Porsche museum. Ideally it'd be more of an interactive stop over.

Happy to spend a night in Belgium -- have never been to Bruges, for example.

[Meltham Terrier]

The Eagles Nest is a great place to visit , but you need to book as it gets very busy.

Also worth a visit is the Salt mine at Berchtesgaden, Train ride, boat ride and slides that take you from one level to another, fantastic with or without kids

https://www.salzbergwerk.de/de

[bolidemichael]

Wow! What a recommendation, precisely the type of inspiration that I was after... their website assumes familiarity of the site, but is this quite prosaic?

It's an abandoned salt mine repurposed into some form of theme park ride?

[bolidemichael]

Good insight, thanks.

Unfortunately, the Eagle's Nest isn't an option as it doesn't open until mid-May

[rcspeirs]

Bruges doesn't have restrictions but the other major Belgian cities (Antwep Brussels Ghent) have low emission rules. If you vehicle is not on Belgian or Dutch plates, you need to register in advance to avoid a fine.

[rcspeirs]

(Accidentallyosted before I had finished typing)
Many German cities , including Stuttgart, have a silmilar scheme.

[Freakuk]

I rode (motorcycle) many years ago down to Mugello for MotoGP and avoided France all the way down, we went via Holland, Germany, Switzerland.

In Germany we had a day/night in Stuttgart for the Porsche museum, there's a few good routes on-line for motorcycles but would easily work for cars, fairytale route, castle route, black forest route were some from memory that I weaved between to get to Switzerland. Switzerland we had a night in Andermatt and did many passes, Stelvio, St Gothards to name two.

[greygoose]

Ghent is very nice as well as Bruges if you are spending a night in Belgium (and your children don’t mind seeing two scenic old towns). Heidelberg is a lovely town to visit in Germany.

[RizzoTheRat]

If you want to avoid France totally then the Louwman Museum in the Hague is only half an hour from the Hoek-Harwich ferry.
https://www.louwmanmuseum.nl/

Loads of nice mountain passes either going up around the Bormio - Davos area or go further west through Andermatt.