Trains... Lots of trains

Trains.... Lots of trains.

We'll be travelling through Europe by train.   I found some incredible resources for planning this.   The Man in Seat 61 (link) has to be the best tool for planning train travel.  This guy has very detailed advice on train travel from any point to any other point... including what the rail lines are, how to purchase the tickets without premium, and various cost/speed options.

From seat61.com I learned that all European schedules could be viewed - if not purchased at the German website dbbahn.  This was terrific for planning out the routes and times I wanted.

For price consideration - all travel is 2nd class.   One exception is the Eurostar from London to Paris.

Unlike days of old - European trains are now similar to the Southwest Airline model- cheap tickets when schedules are first released - when those cheap fares are gone there's a medium fare, and if you wait till the end - you pay a lot.   Once I'd figured my routes, I had calendar reminders to start checking to see when booking windows opened.  Some booking windows were 60 days, other 90 days.  Summer schedules sometimes made booking open early... or late.... So there was a lot of checking fares and pouncing and purchasing when the cheap tickets appeared.  

My tickets from Sicily to Bologna and Bologna to Venice were purchased through Trenitalia.  I did make one mistake - in booking our overnight trip out of Sicily I didn't notice the "promiscio" check box... so despite booking 4 cuccetti, which is the number in a room, we're spread between two rooms.  Oh well... 2 parents, 2 kids, divide and conquer.

From Venice we take another overnight train to Vienna, then on to Prague.  I booked these tickets through the Austrian ticket site OBB.   Prague to Berlin and from Berlin to Amsterdam were booked on the German bahn site.

I vacillated back and forth on whether to take the train or a ferry/train combo to get from Amsterdam to London.   The timing of the ferry/train combo was akward - involving losing a night in Amsterdam and arriving in London too early to check into our London lodging.  The left luggage in London was SUPER expensive... so that factored in.  So we opted for train.  That ticket was purchased through the Dutch train system, NSinternational.  Even the Eurostar portion.  We'll take the IC train from Amsterdam to Brussels Midi - walk down a floor and go through passport control and onto the Eurostar.

For the London to Paris leg I booked directly with Eurostar.  I booked a better class on this - the equivalent of business class.  This will get us lunch on the train.  This was another booking that involved a mistake... I didn't wait long enough to book it - and the lower prices weren't released yet - so I ended up paying full freight on these tickets.  Ouch.  At the time I booked the tickets I was still planning on taking the ferry from Amsterdam to London and thought this was my only "chunnel" trip.  Oh well.

From Paris to Nice, to Aix-en-Provence, to Barcelona I booked everything through 

Capitaine Train.  We'll be doing high speed trains (TGV).   

We have one other train trip planned... The historical Circumetnea train that encircles Mt. Etna.  We'll take the regional train from Giarre/Riposto (where we're staying in Sicily) to Catania.  From Catania Centrale, we'll take the metro to Catania Borgo - one terminus of the "loop" (which is really a semi-circle).  That's where we'll pick up the clockwise route of the Circumetnea.  We'll get off in Randazzo (a beautiful walled town made of volcanic stone) and explore and have lunch.  Then continue our voyage to Giarre/Riposto - the other terminus.  I've wanted to do this trip on my previous two visits to Sicily - and we're making time for it this trip.

We'll probably do the local trains to sightsee from Nice - I'd love to go to Monte Carlo, St. Tropez, Cannes, etc...  More fun with trains.  More trains for the boys to throw me from.