We crafted our own train trip through a few European countries in November. We took six trains through six countries in two weeks!
This post is about how we booked our train travel and selected our accommodation for this two-week adventure. Our route was loosely inspired by a part of the original Orient Express. We used a variety of regional trains across several countries and purchased tickets in a variety of classes. We booked daytime tickets so we could enjoy the countryside views.
Here’s one of our views…
Our Destinations
Our two-week trip began in:
- London, UK, then
- Lyon, France,
- Milan and Venice, Italy and wrapped up
- in Zagreb, Croatia.
Booking tickets
Booking our Flights
We booked our flights 10 months in advance with TAP (Air Portugal). We found that TAP provides a similar service with the same size of planes as the WestJet fleet. As part of the Star Alliance group, we earned a few Aeroplan points too.
Our scheduled route was Toronto to London, UK, via Lisbon, Portugal. Unfortunately, our arrival in Lisbon coincided with a severe thunderstorm, which prevented us from landing at our scheduled time. They diverted the plane to Malaga, Spain, where we sat on the tarmac until it was clear to land in Lisbon. Our London flight was rescheduled, and we landed at London’s Gatwick Airport 6 hours later than scheduled. This was my first-ever diverted flight!
Luckily, we had not planned any activities to do and simply made our way to our Sofitel Airport Hotel for a well-deserved rest.
Booking Our Train Tickets
There are several options when purchasing train tickets in Europe. Many people choose to purchase Eurail passes, but it isn’t always the cheaper option. It depends on the countries visited. Many trains require seat reservations -an additional cost not covered by the Eurail Pass. With our planned itinerary, booking individual tickets was about $100CDN per person cheaper than a Eurail pass. It’s definitely worth checking your train options!
We took advantage of these tips when purchasing train tickets:
- the earlier you make your bookings, the lower the price
- each company sets a different release date for purchasing
- we watched YouTube vloggers to determine the best ticket class for each train
We booked tickets from March to May for our November trip as tickets became available. For example, we were able to book our Eurostar Train tickets six months ahead of departure.
We booked the following tickets:
Here’s what two high-speed trains look like when they pass!
Helpful Travel Apps
We relied on three apps to plan and arrange our travel plans. Rome2Rio was essential for finding routes, times, and dates. Since we wanted to use multiple types of trains and ticket types, we searched 90 days out and also 6 weeks out to find the best options. Once we had our route planned, we used Trainline and Omio to make our bookings.
Rome2Rio
Rome to Rio is a great site to search for all transportation options when booking travel. It compares the travel modes and costs to travel from A to B by air, train, bus, or ferry. It can help you find the cheapest options. We use Rome2Rio everywhere we go!
Trainline
Trainline is easy to navigate. We compared prices of different rail lines, routes and classes and most of our bookings within this app. We chose business, first and second class tickets, depending on the train and duration. Our tickets were stored in the app, and a QR code was generated to display our boarding tickets. The Trainline app is also useful for bus and ferry details. There is a small booking fee, but we felt it was worth it to have our tickets in one convenient space. It was much easier to book on Trainline (in English, in $CDN) than to navigate the French, Italian and Croatian websites. Trainline will book multiple trains if you want to use all the same class in a day. If we had chosen second class from Venezia to Zagreb we could have used this app. Instead, we chose to do a morning train in first class and then purchased second-class tickets for the afternoon train.
Omio
Omio is also a great place to search for all bus, train, ferry and flight options when travelling. Omio helped us book the last leg of our trip to Zagreb from Villach, Austria. We booked multiple trains with different class types on the same day. Our last ticket with OBB (Austria train) required a paper copy of our tickets to board.
If you want to try Omio for the first time, use this code: melisj3h0s4e to save $18 off your first purchase.
We used these apps to compare ticket prices and route options. This helped us plan our trip and ensure that trains were available on the days we wanted to travel. We actually had to shift our hotels in Lyon and Milan by one day to fit the train schedule.
Some views of the Italian Alps!
One of our favourite aspects of train travel was admiring the beautiful train stations. The designs and architecture were impressive in all the major cities. We also enjoyed seeing the smaller train stations. These photos were from Train stations in Paris, Milano, Venezia (Venice) and Zagreb.
Booking Accommodations
Craig is a master researcher when it comes to booking unique stays for us. We consider ourselves mid-budget travellers, but we truly enjoy comfortable hotels. We prefer hotel stays over Airbnb because we don’t want to do any cooking or cleaning while on vacation. We book through Expedia and with our Bonvoy Marriott credit card.
For this trip, we chose our hotels with the following criteria:
- located in the historic centres of the city
- within walking distance of the train station
- had positive, recent reviews on TripAdvisor
Here’s the list of hotels we stayed at while on our train trip:
- Sofitel London Gatwick Hotel, UK
- Hotel Bayard Bellcour Lyon, France
- Hotel Berna, Milano, Italy
- Hotel Olimpia, BW Signature Collection, Venice, Italy
- Sheraton Zagreb Hotel, Zagreb, Croatia
Short Stop in Villach, Austria
One of the cities we visited for lunch (while waiting for our next train) was Villach, Austria. It was a beautiful spot, and we had time to enjoy an Austrian meal and walk through the newly opened Christmas market before our next train. Our Villach to Zagreb Train trip actually travelled through Slovenia, but it was too dark to see the landscape. Here’s what our second-class train seats looked like.
Our next posts will highlight what we saw, did and what we ate during our visits to the amazing cities of Lyon, Milano, Venezia and Zagreb.
Interested in more train travel? Here are links to our other train trip posts:
