Here are some packing suggestions for families planning a similar trip.
Prepare and print out a day by day itinerary to try to get a good mix of activity, driving, culture and food. We used the clear document holders pockets amd included extra for tickets and receipts. Include hours of operation for everything and call them the week before (we found a lot of places were closed.) Include rainy day activities. Something we really liked was including on our daily list specialty foods from the areas we were travelling through to make sure to try them. We did sausages and beer in Bavaria but I regret not taking time to try real Black Forest cake.
Good cell phone and data access was central to our trip. Make sure it won't cost too much by using a SIM card bought in Europe.
If you're driving, bring a GPS with current Euro maps loaded and add all of your AirBnbs and the main destinations for your trip. When you're tired of trying to read road signs, just follow the GPS. It saved our bacon many times.
Buy tickets to museums and book activities as much as possible in advance to ensure you get to do what you want, when you have time to do it. For example, we booked horsebackriding in Vik in advance. They are a small operation so we wouldn't have been able to go if another group had arrived first. We arranged to go blokarting in the Netherlands but there wasn't enough wind for us to go on the day we had chosen to do it, so we missed out.
When on our way to Ameland, the ferry was very busy and so called the bike rental place while on the ferry to reserve e-bikes. We were really lucky to get them because they are popular and extra fun to ride.
Check if the places you want to visit have tours in languages that you understand and find out when they are offered, because it might just be on weekends.
If you like picnics and want to make best use of grocery stores, bring a large cooler bag, freezer packs, a few Thermoses, water bottles, a cutting board, utensils, plates, bowls and, of course, a good corkscrew.
Bring a first aid kit. We didn't need it but that's a good thing.
Bring a Bluetooth speaker so you can have tunes wherever you go.
Since we were staying in people's homes through AirBnb, we brought a pack safe with a strong key lock. We locked our valuables inside of the car when we were in Amsterdam and didn't really use it other than that, but it was a nice option to have.
It was nice to have brought maple sugar in little present bags (and thank you cards) to leave for the AirBnb hosts and others that we met.
Everybody had a day pack and duffel bag. We packed extra duffel bags for gifts and momentos and brought one hard-sided suitcase for fragile Items. If we had brought hard sided suitcases, we wouldn't have had enough trunk space.
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