I thought it would make a good blog post to talk about how I went about planning for such a trip.
First a bit of background, this was not our original plan, in 2021 I had booked an epic five week overland journey all the way from our home in North Wales to Hong Kong via a number of trains including the iconic Trans Siberian (Trans Mongolian) Railway. I spent so long planning and booking everything in meticulous detail, every individual train, hotel, excursion, and activity. I don’t need to tell you that due to circumstances around the world in 2021 we needed to cancel the trip and re-book everything for 2022. And again, due to both the political situation in Russia and the Chinese borders we needed to cancel the trip again. Rather that postpone it for another year as I doubt the situation will be much better in 2023 (fingers crossed it will be by 2025, which is when I hope to finally do the trip) we decided to do an Epic European Train Adventure instead. With just four weeks before our planned departure I started to research where we should go, what we should do and how we were going to do it.
Working out where to go
First thing we did was basically look at a map and make a list of all the places we would like to visit, we had a fixed date of when we would leave the UK based on our Eurostar from London to Paris (rebooked from our cancelled 2021 trip). Matthew really wanted to go to Berlin as he is really interested in the Second World War since learning about it in school and Holly wanted to go to Italy due to her love of pasta and pizza, I then filled in the gap with the places I would like to visit.
Buying a ticket
First thing I did was check out the Interrail website, if you are not familiar with Interrail (or Eurail if you are from outside of Europe) they offer one ticket for unlimited train journeys within Europe for a specified amount of time, you just need to make seat reservations for high-speed and night trains, their website says these reservations cost from around €3 to €10 each. I would later find out that some would cost way more that this.
After working out our plans I decided on the 22 days continuous ticket and chose a first class ticket rather than a second class one for additional comfort and access to lounges in a number of train stations. This ticket allowed unlimited train travel on as many trains as you like for 22 days straight – perfect for our fast-paced trip with multiple destinations. The total cost of the ticket was £580, which I thought was good value considering I normally pay around £100 for an off peak return ticket from my home to London. The best part is because Matthew and Holly were under 12 years old at the time of travel their tickets were free of charge, so we had three first class tickets for just £580.
Reserving train seats
As soon as I purchased the Interrail ticket I spent a whole weekend making seat reservations for all our trains, I did this in a couple of different ways including through Interrail via their website and directly with the relevant train companies.
One thing that really shocked me was the cost as Interrail had stated that reservations cost around €3 to €10 each, I had to make a couple that were over €200 for the three of us, in total I spend almost three times the cost of the actual Interrail ticket just on seat reservations, bringing the travel cost to over £2000!
Using the Interrail site to reserve seats you could not specify where you wanted to sit, just give preferences such as a table seat, window or aisle, etc. We always specified a table seat and luckily we were always seated around the same one.
But what we found out is that some seats we could not book via Interrail, either because the allocation had run out or they did not appear within their system. In those cases we booked them with the train company directly, and to be honest I preferred this as you could choose exactly where you wanted to sit and view the reservation directly in their app without having to print them out.
Booking Hotels
The following weekend was spend booking our hotels, I used both booking.com and hotels.com to do this as they are my go-to places to book accommodation as well as directly with some hotels not on them.
As we had our travel itinerary planned out it was easy to know which cities we would be staying at for which night. The criteria for the hotels were it needed to be in a central location and hopefully within walking distance from the train station we would be arriving into. As we would only be in some locations for one night I wanted to reduce the amount of travelling involved to get from our hotels to the sites we wanted to see.
As we were booking our hotels just three weeks before the start of our trip, in the middle of summer during the first time people where travelling again after border restrictions eased around the world it was more difficult than I thought to get mid-range hotels at reasonable prices. They were just all sold out. I can even remember when looking for accommodation in Sorrento, booking.com said 96% off all accommodation was booked for the time I wanted it.
In the end we booked a number of apartments instead of hotels and to be honest we were very pleased with them, in fact I will probably look at booking apartments again for future trips not just hotels.
Accommodation booked directly:
- London – Premier Inn St. Pancras Hotel
- Paris – Disney’s Santa Fe Hotel
- Lake Garda – Gardaland Hotel
Accommodation booked on booking.com:
- Paris – Mercure Gare l’Est Hotel
- Zurich – HITrental Niederdorf Apartments
- Milan – Ibis Milan Centro Hotel
- Florence – Domus Plaza
- Sorrento – Apartments One
- Venice – Hotel Filu
- Berlin – Hotel Gat Point Charlie
Accommodation booked through Hotels.com
- Paris – TimHotel Gare Du Nord
- Rome – Hotel Mimosa
- Amsterdam – Hotel Van Gelder
I was happy with everywhere we booked, except for maybe Hotel Van Gelder in Amsterdam, it was one of the most expensive places we stayed but also one of the worst, very, very basic, no air conditioning, workmen on scaffolding outside our window, it was basically somewhere you would stay on a stag weekend.
The highlight was Apartments One in Sorrento, we had an amazing stay with our own kitchen, dining room, and even our own terrace with furniture and a hammock, the staff were very friendly as well. I would have loved to have stayed here for more than one night.
Booking Museums and attractions
The final thing I needed to do was booking our entry for all the tourist attractions we wanted to visit. I did this over the course of another whole weekend (with just two weeks to go before the beginning of our trip). Almost all attractions around Europe now require you to book in advance, lots of do not allow you to just turn up on the day anymore and get in.
As it was so close to our trip, some of the activities we wanted to do was no longer available and sold out, these included going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, full experience ticket for the Roman Colosseum which included access to the underground section, we had to settle for a regular ticket and also Vatican tickets that included climbing to the top of St Peters Dome. For that one we needed to book with a tour group which cost four times it would have cost if we booked directly.
How we stayed organised
This really was an “Epic European Adventure” consisting of 30 trains (4 being sleeper trains), 12 buses, 8 taxis, 5 boats, 2 trams, the London Underground, The Paris Metro and 13 different hotels travelling over 4500 miles. All that over the course of 22 days and travelling with two children meant I needed to be super organised to ensure the trip went as smoothly as possible.
To do this I did three different things, during the whole planning stage I would write everything down in a notepad, I am still pretty old-school when it comes to making notes and prefer using a pen and paper rather than recording my notes digitally. The other two things I do are digital though.
When it comes to planning trips I always download a monthly calendar from Calendarpedia and add our itinerary to it, it keeps an overview of everything in one place, I find it really useful to quickly glance at it to know exactly what we are doing and where we will be at any time.
Here is mine from this trip, green times are confirmed seat reservations, black times do not require reservations:
Finally, I would write a detailed itinerary in Apple Notes that I could view on my phone during the trip that had everything in it, the times of the train, the times of the attractions, etc. It was very useful and would continually keep looking at it throughout the day to see where we needed to be and when.
Conclusion
Well, that is how I prepared for our Epic European Adventure, I did it over three consecutive weekends on the run up to our trip and to be honest I would have preferred more time, but that was simply not an option due to the short notice and school holidays. But it ended up being an amazing experience.
