PT_ANDRE_PT
Traveller
3 comments
Posted 8 years ago
Hi!
Firstly i would like to introduce myself. I'm 16, live in Lisbon, Portugal and I decided with my friends that we'll be doing an InterRail in August 2017. By that time we'll be 18 and we'll be inbetween High School and College. I know it's very soon and there's still a year and a half to the trip, but we are starting now to think of the places we want to visit, the routes we would like to take so we can know how much we need to save or ask our parents to lend.
Since this will be our first of hopefully many InterRails we are thinking of visiting more of the Weastern side of Europe, where cities are supposedly safer, leaving the Eastern side to another year, when we'll have more experience in this way of travelling.
Now let's get to the point. We're thinking of buying the 22 day continuos InterRail, but since we don't have any king of experience I would appreciate your opinion on the preliminary route we've concebed, if i'ts too long for 22 days or if it is okay.
Since flights are getting cheaper and cheaper with low cost airlines we're thinking of going from Lisbon to Paris by plane, and then start our journey trough Europe there, since it's a more central city than Lisbon. We are still not sure of what places to visit, but we have a general idea, so i'll leave it here:
Lisbon - Paris (Plane)
Paris - Bruxels
Bruxels - Amsterdam
Amsterdam - Berlin
Berlin - Prague
Prague - Vienna
Vienna - Venice
Venice - Rome
Rome - South of France (We want to stop here to go to the beach for a day, and enjoy the weather, but we haven't decided where to, so If you know any good beaches and villages tell me :) )
South of France - Toulouse (A friend of mine wants to visit the Airbus Factory)
Toulouse - Barcelona
Barcelona - Madrid
Madrid - Lisbon
We're thinking of travelling during the night, taking the night trains, and in some cities stay for the night. Since we have almost no knowlodge about the connections that exist between these cities I would appreciate If you could give me a general idea. Please tell me If you think this route is to pretencious for 22 days, because we can cut some cities from it, and if you have some suggestion.
Thank you :)
André
ardeeay
Traveller
99 comments
Hi Andre
Sounds like a tremendous trip and very achievable. You have listed 11 cities plus the south of France. This would be quite easy even if you add a few more cities, and spend a couple of days in some of them. You may not need a 22 days Continuous pass – look at some of the other/cheaper options. Count up how many days you would need to travel on.
In 2013 and 2014 I took two trips using Eurail passes and travelled almost every night by sleeper train – hardly any hotels. The first trip had the objective of visiting almost all the capital cities of Western Europe and the Balkans which were accessible by train (28 capital cities in 40 days/nights). The second trip had the objective of travelling on all the DBahn CNL services, and to get to Nordkapp via train to Rovaniemi and then by bus, for midnight on the Summer Solstice.
At the time (and after) I made a number of posts which you might care to follow up.Because you need to allow for cities to be far enough apart to enable enough time for night trains to run between them, a simple logical circular route may not be the most feasible. I did quite a lot of zig-zagging across Europe to be able to use only night trains!
I like travelling by night train. You get to meet lots of new friends in the corridors, have the maximum time available to walk around your destination city (wasting no valuable sight-seeing time sitting on a train) and during summer see quite a bit of the scenery during long evenings and (if you wake up early) the
However I understand that DBahn will stop running their CNL services after December this year. Although there will still be other services operated by OBB and other national railways, the choice will not be as extensive. To check on all currently available night trains use this rail.cc site and click on the Night Trains links. By the time 2017 comes around there will probably be some changes (like no CNL) but you will get a good idea for you planning purposes.
Good luck with your planning – I think that is half of the fun!
Best wishes
Richard
Wouter
Traveller
102 comments
Hi André,
Welcome on our forum!
Since your trip is in 2017 you have time enough to plan! Personalty I like planning as well :) Despite the fact that some people just start traveling and will see where they end up, all possibilities are fun!
First of all you may want to have a look at our blogs (left upper corner). For some of your routes is information available! First of all do some research about the cities you are going, maybe where to say and what to see, and if it is worth it. I would recommend taking an other Interrail pass type as you want to stay some days in cities. I can recommend making an Excel document with all your travel times, individual costs and hotels to make a good overview of your trip. Sometimes your route can be cheaper when you buy your tickets locally or beforehand online than your Interrail day price (IRprice/days) although you will lose your flexibility with buying tickets beforehand.
CNL are perfect for traveling by night and skipping some hotel costs. When you are traveling by friends the 5p couchette (~€35/night/p/p) are perfect. Other options in the CNL are 2p sleepers (~€80/night/p/p)(sometimes connected to make 4p).
Check out the [ux]http://plan.rail.cc[/ux] online DB planner for the most complete European timetables. Just set your date 2 months in front and you are good to go. Keep in mind that timetables can changes in December. To have your local costs you have to switch towards the local transporter.
Last of all the things I know for sure:
Paris Brussels you probably take the Thalys. (reservation required!, some rules about available seats)
Brussels - Amsterdam (blog available) can be done by 3 different services. You want to take the direct IC.
A blog about for traveling within the Netherlands is available as well.
A blog about the IC Berlin (Amsterdam - Berlin) is available as well.
Have fun planning and make sure you explore RailCC to the bottem :)
Wouter
PT_ANDRE_PT
Traveller
3 comments
Hi Richard!
We aren't planning on spendid lots of time in each city, so I think we'll search for a couple more cities do add to our route. About the night trains, since not every cities we want to visit have a direct connection at night, I think we'll try do do some of that zigzagging you suggested, but we still have loads of time to see, and we'll only plan that next year, probably after our Final Exams. I'll surelly look up into your posts for additional information and ideas for the connections.
Thank you for you awnser and nice trips!
PT_ANDRE_PT
Traveller
3 comments
Hi Wouter!
Personally I like to have my things well organized and I think we'll try to plan our trip well, but always leaving some flexibility in case we want to do something spontaneous, because travelling on an InterRail doesn't make much sense if you don't have some liberty to do what you want to do in the moment.
I'll defenetly take a look at the blogs when we start planning our trip in more detail, as well as everything else that comes with visiting new cities. We are thinking of doing some mettings next year in one of my friends house where we would spend the afternoon looking into everything and deciding in group, and if possible making all the reservations online. The Excel document suggestion seems pretty interesting, and I'll definitely post it here next year.
Thank you for you awnser and nice trips!
PT_ANDRE_PT
Traveller
3 comments
By the way, do you think 1200 euros is enough for the trip? By the maths i've done this should be enough, but still, because of the reservations in some trains, i don't know if 150 for extra transports like inside city and reservations is enough.