When we holiday with the family, we take the car; wit h3 kids and the luggage, it's more conveninet (and definitely cheaper - gasoline is so cheap in Europe).

When I go to London, I take the plane, because it's still faster for me (Air France has a special business flight where you can register only 10 minutes before the plane leaves, and it flies to City Airport, which is very convenient to go to the City, as I usually do)

I got sick of trains after my year in the military. I took trains so much that they now evoke memories of being dead tired, and I end up not even being able to read or anything. (my military service was in the middle of the Black Forest, it was 150 km from Strasbourg, but it took 3h30 with 2 changes to do the trip, plus a 20 minute bus ride at the end...)

I feel okay about it. 5 people + luggage in a compact MPV is not so horribly wasteful; we never use the car during the week as I take the metro and my wife works from home (well, this year we used it to take our son to the hospital in the suburbs); as for my plane trips, I figure that a full plane with full price business travellers (at 500 euros a pop) pays fairly for its use of resources... maybe I am deluded.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes