thalys, ice, tgv..

kindalen

hi all,
looking to do a 2/3 centre holiday flying to mainland europe and using first class train to travel to another city and fly home from there.

any ideas? have done eurostar and italian high speed trains, so prob looking at germany, france, netherlands, or eastern europe.

thanks folks.:)

mikedragon32

There's an ICE service run by DB that runs from Amsterdam to Zurich via Frankfurt and (I think) Stuttgart.

My experience on ICE and Thalys is that they're great services.

kindalen

thanks, can you tell me do they have any lounges? or what are the trains like?

rossie1977

amsterdam-brussels-paris perhaps, journey direct takes about 3hr, if you want to break it up, its about 2hr amsterdam to brussels and brussels to paris takes about 1 hour

its 3hr from paris to marseille on the tgv if that takes your fancy, just over a 500 mile journey

the line between paris and strasbourg is i believe the fastest in europe

there really isn't much of the german line thats high-speed, only really about frankfurt to cologne and nurnberg to munich (both of which are done in about an hour), the thing i like about ice trains though is that they show the speed you are travelling at in a panel between carriages, didn't see that on the italian or french high speed trains

kindalen

interesting. am open to ideas. have been to paris quite a bit... but inot been to marseille.
i love france, but never been too austria or switzerland...

BigDinny

During the last 2 Summers, I flew in to Munich and got a train from there. Last year I got the train from Munich to Vienna- some lovely scenery going through Bavaria to Salzburg and then mountains and forests from there to Vienna. It was with the Railjet, Austria's high speed train service. It was a 6 hour trip, but well worth it! While in Vienna, I took the 1 hour trip to Bratislava on a local train-an interesting town and one I would recommend.

This year I flew in to Munich and got the Eurocity to Verona. It was a very scenic journey as the train wended it's way through the Alpine valleys. I was looking out at beautiful vistas all the way. There are some nice potential stopoffs on the way- Innsbruck, Bolzano/Bozen in the South Tyrol where Oetzi is on view in the local archaeological museum. Verona is a nice city with lots to see and is a 2 hour trainride from Venice and all it's attractions

kindalen

munich to vienna, and a day trip to bratislava sounds class. can you remember how much tickets cost?

BigDinny

Munich to Vienna was under €90 return if I remember correctly- managed to get one of the Deutsche Bahn's specials. Vienna to Bratislava was €15 or so return.

schemingbohemia

This site is great for all european train journeys - it does have a UK slant though
http://www.seat61.com/

This is the German Rail site and will give prices for German routes but it also has all European train timetables too.

http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?rt=1&

Skud

the thalys train cost me 35 euro one way paris to amsterdam. I booked it really early (3 months in advance). Was second class but the seats were better than the cork - dublin cie train (2nd class obv)

kindalen

thanks all, shall have a look at these.