Rail holidays

[Gerrumonside ref]

Anyone ever done a holiday exclusively by rail in Europe?

Quite fancy London-San Sebastian, then a day there before San Sebastián-Zaragoza, then Zaragoza-Madrid, 2 days in Madrid, then Madrid-Barcelona, 2 days in Barcelona, then Barcelona-Paris and Paris-London.

Anyone done anything similar in Europe or elsewhere?

[The Hallucinating Goose]

19 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

Anyone ever done a holiday exclusively by rail in Europe?

Quite fancy London-San Sebastian, then a day there before San Sebastián-Zaragoza, then Zaragoza-Madrid, 2 days in Madrid, then Madrid-Barcelona, 2 days in Barcelona, then Barcelona-Paris and Paris-London.

Anyone done anything similar in Europe or elsewhere?

Yeah I do one every couple of years, admittedly the last one, in 2019, I had to fly to the start and fly back from the end but that was essentially to do with time constraints. That one was, Fly to Nice, then Monaco-Avignon, Avignon-Carcassonne, Carcassonne-Barcelona, Barcelona-Madrid, Madrid-Gibraltar. 

In 2018 I did, Hull-Luxembourg, Luxembourg-Cologne, Cologne-Brussels, Brussels-Hull. 

In 2016 I did what was probably the best one I've done. That was 16 days long and was, Hull-Heidelberg, Heidelberg-Nuremburg, Nuremburg-Innsbruck, Innsbruck-Salzburg, Salzburg-Vienna, Vienna-Bratislava-Vienna (that bit was just a day trip), Vienna-Prague, Prague-Berlin, Berlin-Lubeck, Lubeck-Cologne, Cologne-Mainz, Mainz-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Hull. 

Travelling by rail cannot be beaten for enjoyment and experience. You'll create some truly incredible memories and expand yourself into a much more complete person. 

[Gerrumonside ref]

15 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Yeah I do one every couple of years, admittedly the last one, in 2019, I had to fly to the start and fly back from the end but that was essentially to do with time constraints. That one was, Fly to Nice, then Monaco-Avignon, Avignon-Carcassonne, Carcassonne-Barcelona, Barcelona-Madrid, Madrid-Gibraltar. 

In 2018 I did, Hull-Luxembourg, Luxembourg-Cologne, Cologne-Brussels, Brussels-Hull. 

In 2016 I did what was probably the best one I've done. That was 16 days long and was, Hull-Heidelberg, Heidelberg-Nuremburg, Nuremburg-Innsbruck, Innsbruck-Salzburg, Salzburg-Vienna, Vienna-Bratislava-Vienna (that bit was just a day trip), Vienna-Prague, Prague-Berlin, Berlin-Lubeck, Lubeck-Cologne, Cologne-Mainz, Mainz-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Hull. 

Travelling by rail cannot be beaten for enjoyment and experience. You'll create some truly incredible memories and expand yourself into a much more complete person. 

Some great ideas for an itinerary there.

Do you use a specialist like Rail bookers?

Or do you plan it all out independently using seat61.com etc?

[The Hallucinating Goose]

21 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

Some great ideas for an itinerary there.

Do you use a specialist like Rail bookers?

Or do you plan it all out independently using seat61.com etc?

I tend to do it all independently. Seat61 is a fantastic resource. I use booking.com for hotels and raileurope for the train tickets.

I have two tips for you. You cannot ever do too much planning. And the one thing I've found most important is, the location of your hotel is much more important than the price. 

My trip in 2016 was done on a really small budget and as such I was booking hotels in inconvenient locations, generally far out of city centres, because they were so much cheaper. On several occasions, after travelling for hours, I couldn't be bothered to walk to the hotel, say 3 miles out of the city centre, and so got a taxi because it was easier than negotiating unfamiliar public transport. I learnt that big city taxis are expensive and so as a result I paid €40 for a taxi and €25 for a rubbish hotel. Similarly, if you have to get an early morning train, you don't necessarily want to walk miles to the train station at 6 in the morning and so get a taxi, spending the amounts mentioned. 

What I learnt from this was instead of getting a cheap hotel and then a taxi for €65, get a better hotel in the city centre, for say, €50 and you'll be a lot more comfortable and save money at the same time. The best example of this is my two trips to Cologne. The first time, a horrible hotel miles away from anyway for one night and an expensive taxi the next morning, €65 in total. The second time, a slightly more expensive hotel just round the corner from the train station for two nights, no need for a taxi when I left of course, €60. Much happier experience, money saved!

[shaun mc]

As HG states, The Man in Seat 61 is a great resource and by rail is the best way to travel in Europe.

Getting across Paris from Paris Nord station can be a bit of a pain - always allow plenty of time. Man in Seat 61 will show you it step by step

Europe by Rail is a great book to get some ideas together

2 places I'd recommend on the way to San Sebastien are - the Bay of Arcachon which can be reached by rail from Bordeaux, and St Jean De Luz, which is close to the border.

The crossing into Spain needs a bit of research (or it did 3 or 4 years ago) and onwards to San Sebastien

 

[hindle xiii]

2 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Yeah I do one every couple of years, admittedly the last one, in 2019, I had to fly to the start and fly back from the end but that was essentially to do with time constraints. That one was, Fly to Nice, then Monaco-Avignon, Avignon-Carcassonne, Carcassonne-Barcelona, Barcelona-Madrid, Madrid-Gibraltar. 

In 2018 I did, Hull-Luxembourg, Luxembourg-Cologne, Cologne-Brussels, Brussels-Hull. 

In 2016 I did what was probably the best one I've done. That was 16 days long and was, Hull-Heidelberg, Heidelberg-Nuremburg, Nuremburg-Innsbruck, Innsbruck-Salzburg, Salzburg-Vienna, Vienna-Bratislava-Vienna (that bit was just a day trip), Vienna-Prague, Prague-Berlin, Berlin-Lubeck, Lubeck-Cologne, Cologne-Mainz, Mainz-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Hull. 

Travelling by rail cannot be beaten for enjoyment and experience. You'll create some truly incredible memories and expand yourself into a much more complete person. 

Err, Kingston-upon-Hull, please.

[M j M]

I did proper inter-railing with a pair of fellow train-y types back in '94 and again in '99.

The overnight rail network was rather better developed back then and in '94 we spent a lot of time studying the Thomas Cook European timetable to come up with an itinerary before we left home. We aimed as much as possible to stick to loco-hauled stuff. The itinerary in '94 was something along the lines of -

Leeds-London Victoria by National Express, then Victoria to Dover Priory and Dover-Calais on SNAT's Fiesta (one of my favourite ships, which I made my friends pass up earlier sailings to get)

Slept on the beach at Calais (it was August)

Calais-Paris via Boulogne on good, loco-hauled Corail stock with an engine change where the Boulogne-Paris line comes under the wires.

Day in Paris doing touristy stuff

Rather than pay for a hostel, as couchette accommodation was included in the Interrail ticket we took the night train Paris-Bar le Duc, got off there and boarded the corresponding inbound night train Bar le Duc-Paris at around 3am, can't remember where the trains were going to/originated. The showers at the main Paris stations were a very important part of keeping us vaguely hygenic. When Bar le Duc was mentioned in a history A Level class a few months later (something Napoleonic happened there) I was able to claim I'd visited this historic site.

Another day in Paris

Paris-Bordeaux night train

Day in Bordeaux and we must have splashed out on a youth hostel here I think for a night or two

Bordeaux-Narbonne (Narbonne a favourite of mine from childhood)

Narbonne-Cerbere

Overnighted on the beach at Cerbere with all sorts of exciting gauge-changing stuff going on up at the Cerbere-Port Bou border stations with their absolutely vast yards full of rolling stock.

Cerbere-Marseille

Overnighted somewhere in Marseille

Marseille-Nice

Night on the beach at Nice

Nice-Lyon (night in a youth hostel)

Lyon-Paris (relented to a first trip on a TGV)

Another night in Paris

Paris-Calais (this was at my instigation as we were a day ahead of schedule and had left Calais first time around before I'd had chance to properly take pictures of the ships from the pierhead). Youth hostel overnight.

Somehow we got to Amsterdam, not sure what the connection back then was but after another couple of days exploring the city and trying out some of their beautiful yellow EMUs, we went up to the Hook of Holland and back to the UK on the night boat which was the Stena Europe.

 

You wouldn't believe, or would believe but would probably be appalled by, the amount of McDonalds consumed on this trip. We were 17 years old and I think at least 50% of the meals were taken there. Occasionally we'd go to the cafeteria at one of the hypermarkets or chain stores which were good and cheap-ish. I think we got more adventurous as time went along.

I'm not sure you could even do this sort of holiday nowadays, certainly the train options just aren't there any more. We'd spend hours and hours sat on the end of platform at the Paris stations watching stuff come and go and nobody batted an eyelid - whereas doing the same now I feel really conspicuous, and that's if it's possible to access without a ticket (not that hard to get around admittedly). I look back on it very fondly indeed, but there were already signs that the end of an era was near - for starters taking the classic London-Dover-Calais-Paris connection was eccentric given the Channel Tunnel had just opened although it was certainly cost effective.

[gingerjon]

I'm far too old and boring these days but I am half-interested in making a rail-based detour to Wuppertal in Germany before I cark it.

 

[meast]

21 hours ago, gingerjon said:

I'm far too old and boring these days but I am half-interested in making a rail-based detour to Wuppertal in Germany before I cark it.

 

Always wanted to experience this, and despite visiting the Rhine-Ruhr region 3 times, I've never managed to make it Wuppertal yet.

[distantdog]

Me and the wife did a two week Interrail in 2019 taking in the Batley Toulouse game. Travelled by ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam, then spent a few days in Ams, before travelling down via Antwerp and Lille. Got the TGV to Toulouse and used that as a base for a few days. Decent central location and visits to Albi, Narbonne, Carcassonne and Auch amongst other places. Returned via Paris and another stay in Amsterdam

Still young enough (55) to get excited to be drinking tea upstairs on a train going at 300+ kph.

As everyone says, planning is the key. Depending on time of year, book routes ahead as some of the routes get really busy.

Not much beats the excitement of turning up at a railway station and being able to choose your trip in a different country.

A couple of years before we went to Munich and used the excellent rail system in Germany to explore. Germany in particular has fantastic offers making rail travel a real bargain.

[M j M]

2 hours ago, distantdog said:

As everyone says, planning is the key. Depending on time of year, book routes ahead as some of the routes get really busy.

Not much beats the excitement of turning up at a railway station and being able to choose your trip in a different country.

I think both of these are true, the first one somewhat unfortunately. 

With modern fluid pricing or early booking discounts, planning and booking ahead is now essential for most holidays (admittedly the Interrail ticket mitigates this). Accommodation has gone the same way.

Back in 2003 me and two friends spent three weeks touring round the Adriatic and Aegean hunting down as many old ferries and passenger ships in service in Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and the east coast of Italy as we could (we got 31 in total).

We booked nothing in advance, not even a first night's accommodation even though we knew we'd be in Koper in Slovenia. We just turned up and trusted there would be space on ships and trains and that somewhere would be available to sleep, usually provided by of crowds of people at each bus or train station or port of call with rooms to rent. And if not, well sleeping on a beach or on deck or on the floor of a station was ok. 

I still do this sort of trip - although slightly less fast paced and always with a proper bed now - but somewhere along the line everything got really organised with draft itineraries sent back and forth with an urgency to pre-book to get certainty and to get at the best prices.

And it does really lose a little when you don't just make it up as you go along. Turning up at a station and deciding on the spot where to go next never felt more appealing than right now.

[Bleep1673]

I have done Inter-railing, I have also done London-Paris-Perpignan-Barcelona-Madrid-Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam-Arnhem & return to London.

While Inter-railing I accidently ended up in Turin, when I got on the wrong train, and met a very nice family who put me up overnight.

The railway timetable app, "Trainline", now covers most of western Europe, and is reasonably accurate

[Gerrumonside ref]

Thanks for everybody’s contributions and ideas so far.

[shaun mc]

Loco2 was the best website for planning individual and multiple legs of a route. However, it has now been swallowed by Rail Europe and now charges a £5.95 booking fee (previously free).

The RE website looks and works basically the same, and IMO provides better information than Trainline - such as it gives you the whole route and stations of a service, and a little map of the route, not just the leg you want to travel on - very useful if you are flexible or may look at alternative stops or just ideas for another journey. RE also warn you where a change of trains is a bit tight.

Austrian and Swiss trains are very good on punctuality. In 2018 I did a journey from Chamonix into Switzerland and onto Nuremberg. There were 2 changes of 4 minutes in Switzerland - these were no problem. Hop off the train, down the steps, under the track, back up the steps, to then see your next train ready to pull in. I was however, delayed by 6 hours later in the journey to Nuremberg - but understandable - a thunderstorm took trees down and blocked lines.

[M j M]

It's been a while since I looked as most national websites have pulled their games up a lot in recent years but a decade or so ago the DB website was the best place to go to look at schedules across Europe. I find that places like Rail Europe are sometimes too clever for their own good and can highlight the fastest rather than best or cheapest or more interesting connections.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

41 minutes ago, shaun mc said:

Loco2 was the best website for planning individual and multiple legs of a route. However, it has now been swallowed by Rail Europe and now charges a £5.95 booking fee (previously free).

The RE website looks and works basically the same, and IMO provides better information than Trainline - such as it gives you the whole route and stations of a service, and a little map of the route, not just the leg you want to travel on - very useful if you are flexible or may look at alternative stops or just ideas for another journey. RE also warn you where a change of trains is a bit tight.

Austrian and Swiss trains are very good on punctuality. In 2018 I did a journey from Chamonix into Switzerland and onto Nuremberg. There were 2 changes of 4 minutes in Switzerland - these were no problem. Hop off the train, down the steps, under the track, back up the steps, to then see your next train ready to pull in. I was however, delayed by 6 hours later in the journey to Nuremberg - but understandable - a thunderstorm took trees down and blocked lines.

I agree with this, Rail Europe is the site I use for buying tickets. Another tip I have found for saving a bit of money is to not book seat reservations when you purchase your tickets. You can buy your ticket and choose not to book a seat cos it normally adds on quite a bit to the cost. If you are willing to search the train for an empty seat or simply stand up for your journey then it is no problem. Also, if halfway through your trip you get fed up of standing, you can normally go to a ticket office at any decent sized station and purchase the seat reservations at that point separately. I have done this in the past after one journey when I stood for 4 hours rammed into a door area at the end of a train with about a million other people, can't remember what the journey was now but I just went to the ticket office when I got to the next station, told them I wanted to reserve some seats and gave them the details of the trains. Quick and easy and I think the reservations were about €4 each at that point as opposed to about €15 each at the time of the original ticket purchase. 

[shaun mc]

7 hours ago, M j M said:

It's been a while since I looked as most national websites have pulled their games up a lot in recent years but a decade or so ago the DB website was the best place to go to look at schedules across Europe. I find that places like Rail Europe are sometimes too clever for their own good and can highlight the fastest rather than best or cheapest or more interesting connections.

Rail Europe does allow you to add a minimum stopover time to a journey at a particular changeover station, if worried over the connection time, or want to spend time there

I'm not a fan of DB's website, think there are better out there. I've started using the Austrian (OEBB.at) one over DB. On OEBB it will show the whole journey - say Brussels to Prague - and what legs can be booked on that site

If wanting to book seats (agree its not always necessary) - vagonweb.cz will provide the usual train makeup of the journey if you know the service reference, and will help deciding which coach to book seats

Sometimes the fastest routes aren't the best to see Europe - the Rail Europe book notes this. The EuroCity trains are a great option. The journey is probably slower, there are more stops, they may take alternative, more scenic routes and the rolling stock may be older (compartment coaches). But, there's a better chance of travelling from A to B without changes, and the tickets can be cheaper, the longer the journey

[JonM]

On 07/03/2021 at 12:35, Gerrumonside ref said:

Anyone ever done a holiday exclusively by rail in Europe?

Quite fancy London-San Sebastian, then a day there before San Sebastián-Zaragoza, then Zaragoza-Madrid, 2 days in Madrid, then Madrid-Barcelona, 2 days in Barcelona, then Barcelona-Paris and Paris-London.

Anyone done anything similar in Europe or elsewhere?

Me and the Mrs did a rail tour round Central/ Eastern Europe a few months before lockdown - went to Venice, Lake Bled, Vienna, Budapest, Tatras mountains, Bratislava. Absolutely loved it, very keen to do something similar again when it becomes possible, way more enjoyable than fly/drive.

I'd done a fair bit of inter-railing in the early 90s, this was a bit more organised in that we'd booked hotels ahead of time and bought one or two of the train tickets in advance. Wasn't really necessary or even possible for some of the local trains (e.g. Venice to the Slovenian border, walk over the border, train to Bled).

As has already been said, highly recommend man in seat 61 - suggestions for interesting routes and connections, cheap ticket prices, lots of practical help.

[Bleep1673]

On 07/03/2021 at 16:22, M j M said:

I did proper inter-railing with a pair of fellow train-y types back in '94 and again in '99.

The overnight rail network was rather better developed back then and in '94 we spent a lot of time studying the Thomas Cook European timetable to come up with an itinerary before we left home. We aimed as much as possible to stick to loco-hauled stuff. The itinerary in '94 was something along the lines of -

Leeds-London Victoria by National Express, then Victoria to Dover Priory and Dover-Calais on SNAT's Fiesta (one of my favourite ships, which I made my friends pass up earlier sailings to get)

Slept on the beach at Calais (it was August)

Calais-Paris via Boulogne on good, loco-hauled Corail stock with an engine change where the Boulogne-Paris line comes under the wires.

Day in Paris doing touristy stuff

Rather than pay for a hostel, as couchette accommodation was included in the Interrail ticket we took the night train Paris-Bar le Duc, got off there and boarded the corresponding inbound night train Bar le Duc-Paris at around 3am, can't remember where the trains were going to/originated. The showers at the main Paris stations were a very important part of keeping us vaguely hygenic. When Bar le Duc was mentioned in a history A Level class a few months later (something Napoleonic happened there) I was able to claim I'd visited this historic site.

Another day in Paris

Paris-Bordeaux night train

Day ust have splashed out on a youth hostel

Narbonne-Cerbere

Overnighted on the beach at Cerbere with all sorts of exciting gauge-changing stuff going on up at the Cerbere-Port Bou border stations with their absolutely vast yards full of rolling stock.

Cerbere-Marseille

Ah, wonderful Cerebere, where I realised I had left my passport in the hostel I was returning to, and it took me nearly 3 hours to get back to Port Bou.

[Charlie RL]

We did a family holiday by train to Lake Annecy a few years back.  I watched  a You Tube of how to travel across Paris to a different station, which was easy to follow.    It was all good even though SNCF seemed more basic than when I did a 1990's inter rail trip.  Some good suggestions on here 

[egm]

In 2019 I did a trip round France following the Tour de France. Went London-Paris-Clermont-Nimes-Sete-Lourdes-Pau-Gap-Chambery-the Alps-Paris. Would love to do it again via Perpignan for a Catalans game

[demar]

I’m heading to Ukraine in October and although I was only going to go to Kyiv, I was thinking of changing my flight and getting the train down to Odessa and back. I know that the trains in Ukraine are extremely affordable.  

Anyone recommend chernobyl tours? Is it really worth it? I really want to make it worth my while.

Any suggestions welcome.

[Bleep1673]

Always remember to ask the station staff if the train you are pointing at is GOING TO the destination. I was running late and asked "Avignon"? They said "Oui", it then went to Turin, from Avignon.