Three days before departure the hotel in Paris wrote back to say early rooms could not be guaranteed. Everything else in the trip - the driver, the guides, the train to Basel - hung on that one promise, because seven people landing at 7 in the morning with jet lag do not wait politely in a lobby until three in the afternoon.
I asked again, with the arrival time and the number of keys in the subject line. The reply landed at 6:50 in the morning, twenty minutes before the car left the kerb, and it was three words long: "Rooms are ready." That is the whole story of this holiday. The parts nobody sees are requests repeated until somebody with authority answers them.
The driver met them at the arrivals hall with a van that took seven people and their luggage, and the first message I got from the trip was a photograph of a key card at 7:34 a.m.
Rooms with a view and a second bathroom
The hotel sits a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower and about the same distance from the Arc de Triomphe, which sounds like showing off until you work out what it buys. Walking distance covered two thirds of the first day, so a family that had been awake since 2 a.m. could eat, see one thing and stop. I chose it over a bigger place in the eighth that had a pool the children would never have used, and over a cheaper hotel near Gare du Nord with a thirty-minute ride into everything.
The rooming was the hard part. Seven people, three rooms, and one configuration that actually worked: two doubles and a triple on the same floor, with the triple holding the three who wanted to sleep in. The alternative was a suite with a sitting room that cost more than the car and driver combined. I took the three rooms and spent the difference on the airport transfer, which was the right call at 7:20 a.m. when the youngest needed a toilet and the oldest needed a trolley nobody had thought to book.
Three days of guides, and what I cut
The tours ran three days with English-speaking guides, and I cut the fourth. What survived: a morning at Versailles booked for the first entry, because by eleven the courtyard is a queue that moves at the speed of a school group; and a day out at Giverny, an hour and a quarter in the car, for the family who had asked about painters in the first email.
The honest downside of Versailles with seven people is the security line and the distance between rooms when somebody needs the bathroom. We split the group twice and met at an agreed statue, and still lost twelve minutes. It is the trip's one real queue, and I would put it in again, because the alternative - seeing it at three in the afternoon - is worse by a factor of ten.
What I dropped was a second museum day. Seven people do not do museums for four hours, and I have never once regretted replacing a gallery with a park and an ice cream stop. The guide on the third day ended up walking us through the arrondissement instead, which cost the same and gave the children something to argue about at dinner.
The guides came through one office I use in Paris: private walks of two hours rather than seats on a coach, so seven people could stop when the youngest needed to. The rate was higher than a group tour and lower than the hour of the day it saved.
Gare de Lyon, seven passports, one platform
The transfer to Basel was arranged as a chain: a driver to Gare de Lyon with a van that fit the luggage, tickets already in hand, and a train to Basel that runs about three hours and ten minutes. I print everything twice and hand half to a nominated adult, because the person holding the paperwork is not always the person who knows where the platform is.
We reached Basel with time to spare and started an eight-day Rhine sailing built for families - guides and excursions included each day, which is the format that works when seven people have to agree on what to do before lunch. Nobody had to book anything for a week. That is the luxury being sold here, more than the cabin.
Eight days with the decisions removed
On the ship the week changed shape. A daily programme arrives under the door each night, lunch is fixed, and the cabin does not get repacked - so seven people went a full week without a single argument about where to eat or what to do at eleven in the morning.
We came into the Rhine Gorge on the fourth morning: rock at the window at half past seven, a castle on the bend, and three of the family on the top deck in coats they had not expected to need. That day's excursion was a walk up from the landing stage to a village, twenty minutes of gradient that sorted the group into three speeds, and a meeting point at the bakery at eleven regardless of where anybody had got to.
What I had not planned for was how little anyone needed from me. The only message I received all week was a photograph of the youngest asleep in a deck chair at two in the afternoon, sent with no question attached.
What I would tell the next family of seven: the first morning decides the trip. If the rooms are ready, if the bags arrive, if there is coffee before the walking tour, the rest falls into line. If not, you spend day one recovering from the arrival instead of from the flight, and it shows in every photograph afterward.