What is it like to travel across Europe by train?

We started our journey from London’s St Pancras station. The station retains much of its original charm but has been brought bang up to date for use as an international terminal.

So that we could start our journey in a relaxed fashion, we stayed at a Premier Inn hotel in Euston Road, just a few minutes walk away from St Pancras. This meant that a short stroll started our holiday in style, but as we were catching an early train, we missed the hotel breakfast (see below).

St Pancras station has quite a few shops to pass the time while waiting for the train. We bought both breakfast and lunch from the Marks & Spencer shop which opens at 7am. Food is also available on Eurostar once you are on board but we found it more fun to buy our own and have a picnic breakfast. We rather rather naughtily added some very clever wine glasses which come pre-filled with either red or white wine. These have a peel off top, like a yogurt carton and made our lunchtime picnic seem even more fun as the French countryside sped by. Well, we were on holiday after all! Marks & Spencer also sell little cans of double gin, whisky or vodka, already blended with a suitable mixer.

Arrange your own No-Fly European holiday – See Rail Europe for more rail journey details.

The journey to Paris passed quickly as we enjoyed our picnic breakfast on Eurostar. My wife Chris suffers from claustrophobia and was rather anxious about the actual “under the sea” part, but she need not have worried as she barely noticed. The windows go dark for twenty minutes or so, then suddenly the sun comes out and the French countryside appears.

All too soon, as we really enjoyed travelling on Eurostar, we arrived at Paris Gar du Nord station, where we disembarked, as the next stage of our journey involved crossing Paris to Gar du Lyon station. At Gar du Nord you will find a selection of shops and cafes, a bureau de change and free wi-fi for 20 minutes – easily enough for checking emails etc.

After a short wait at Gar du Lyon we joined an extremely comfortable double decker TGV train, operated by the very efficient SNCF, which in our case was heading for sunny Spain. We were on the lower deck on this occasion and we were soon amazed at the speed the train travelled at. Speeds up to 200mph are often attained by the high speed trains, yet we did not feel any real sensation of speed. There is a speedometer at the end of all the carriages so it was fun to see what speed we were achieving.

The outside temperature gradually climbed as we crossed France at high speed. We very much enjoyed our picnic lunch and our glasses of wine, which helped to pass the time. As we pulled into  Marseille the outside temperature showed as 39c on the display in our carriage. A wall of heat hit us as the train doors opened but as we pulled away towards Spain the air conditioning soon regulated the temperature again.

We were on our way to Spain – by train. What fun! Beats flying any day and still totally relaxed.

We travelled with Great Rail Journeys who also operate Rail Discoveries. Their range of holidays by train is huge and oh, so exciting. Let the train take the strain, as they used to say for British Rail.

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