These galleries record some of our travels across Europe. We have occasionally taken a car across the Channel or the North Sea but normally we would go by train and if not by Eurostar, by ferry.
A bit of a rant coming up! We used to have a really nice ferry from Scotland to Zeebrugge, which deposited you in Bruges early afternoon, a short ride from Brussels, where sleepers to all parts of Europe are available. But then Superfast Ferries reduced the service and sent their lovely large modern ships to earn more money elsewhere and left us with a stupid small boat, with very little passenger space and taking three or four hours longer to make the journey. This year they sold up to DFDS who, surprise! Surprise! are withdrawing the service altogether for passengers. Every change that had taken place seems designed to justify this outcome. What a disgrace!
Scottish travellers now have to go via the Newcastle – Amsterdam ferry, which isn’t too much of a hardship. But it would be better to have the choice.
In terms of comfort, reliability and frequency, European railways are generally superb in the west, deteriorating slowly the further east you go, but never so bad you don’t want to go on. We experienced this full range on what was probably our most ambitious trip. This took us from Amsterdam to Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Zagreb to Sarajevo. We returned home via Dubrovnik, Rome, Venice, Innsbruck, Strasbourg, Lyon and Brussels. An account of this journey can be found here
Links to accounts of other journeys to parts of Europe can be found by using the links below.
1) Tears and white Knuckles in La Suisse Normande.
5) Hamburg.
6) Switzerland using a Swiss Rail Pass.
8) Cruise to Iceland, Greenland and Norway.
10) A second visit to Switzerland