goletagoleta's Profile

We travel a lot with our kids. We've been traveling since the 11 year old was 10 months (her first international trip was to the Loire Valley). And before my littlest was 2 he'd been to 7 countries on 4 continents. We travel similarly to you - we take long trips, rarely less than 3 weeks. When my 11 year old was 4.5 and we spent several weeks in Paris we did bring the jogging stroller. I'm not sure why. It was awful. On the one day that we were there when she wasn't feeling great she rode in it but otherwise she was running around and could keep up well with us even on very long walks and if we were all really pooped we'd take the metro home instead of walking. We ended up leaving the stroller in Paris! We'll be spending our upcoming summer in Berlin and Brussels and Stockholm and we'll be taking only a Kinderpack (MUCH, MUCH better than an ergo, in my opinion) for the 2.5 year old and a ring sling (I'm a ring sling wearer and it works well for us and is very portable).
And just a note on kids in Europe - there are plenty of poorly behaved kids in Europe and I rarely see kids in restaurants there unless there are kid friendly places for them to play. Kids are kids and they are wonderful little people. Americans have a different but equally valid approach to raising kids. I'm sure you will have a great time!