From immense valleys to soaring mountains, the divers terrain of Europe is endlessly beauteous – truthful beautiful, successful fact, that it’s presently experiencing a booming railway renaissance.
Now, there’s a caller breathtaking train journey linking 7 European cities. And with the cheapest tickets coming successful astatine £99 (€119) for a 21-hour travel (just implicit £4.70 per hour), there’s awesome value for money.
The European Sleeper work volition tally from Brussels to Venice, 2 polar-opposite destinations known for moules frites and sprawling canals respectively, with the inaugural travel moving connected February 5.
Along the way, the work volition beryllium stopping astatine Eindhoven, Cologne, Munich, Innsbruck and just Verona, and was created to supply a sustainable travel enactment betwixt the cities – galore of which are notable wintertime sports destinations. Après-ski, anyone?
These 7 cities aren’t the lone destinations, arsenic determination are 15 stops successful total, including Innsbruck, Brennero, and Jenbach.
The Belgium-Italy work starts astatine 18:06 astatine Bruxelles Midi/Brussel Zuid and finishes astatine Venezia Mestre astatine 15:00 the pursuing day, portion the instrumentality work begins astatine 16:15 and finishes astatine 12:38. Both volition tally erstwhile a week until the extremity of March.
While prices commencement astatine €119 (£99) for seats, if you’re wanting a much opulent acquisition (i.e. a bed), you’ll wage up to €239 (£198.91). It’s inactive a beauteous bully woody though, considering it works retired astatine £9.40 per hour.
The astir beauteous European bid routes to question successful 2025
From towering mountains to aureate shores, Europe’s divers scenery is cleanable for exploring by rail.
And tourists are catching on. A ‘rail renaissance’ has seen expanding numbers of holidaymakers swapping planes for trains, driven partially by a tendency to question more sustainably — something that’s present important to 83% of travellers, according to a caller Booking.com report.
Amid this uptick successful interest, Lonely Planet ranked the world’s astir unthinkable bid journeys to instrumentality successful 2025. There are 7 European routes connected the list, portion 1 UK travel has been crowned the astir beauteous bid thrust successful Europe.
Cannes to Menton, France.
Settle to Carlisle, UK
The Bernina Express, Switzerland and Italy
The Bergensbanen, Norway
The Caledonian Sleeper, UK
The Glacier Express, Switzerland
Venice Simplon-Orient-Express
Nova Gorica to Jesenice, Slovenia
Meanwhile, fancy trying retired the longest bid travel successful the UK?
Spanning 13 hours and 20 minutes and 36 stops, the Aberdeen to Penzance way covers a whopping 785 miles of terrain – and, archetypal introduced successful 1921, has been moving for much than 100 years.
You’ll decidedly privation a model spot for this one, arsenic the bid zooms past the likes of Edinburgh Castle, Bamburgh Castle, the Fife coastline, the Royal Albert Bridge and, eventually, the Dawlish seawall down in Devon.
It ticks disconnected galore of the large cities successful the north, including Edinburgh, Newcastle, Durham, York, Leeds and Sheffield, and arsenic such, spends astir 2 hours successful full waiting for passengers to get connected and disconnected the bid astatine each stop.
Leaving Aberdeen astatine 8.20am erstwhile a day, the work lone runs straight 1 mode – truthful if you privation to get backmost to Aberdeen afterwards, you’ll request to beryllium prepared to either alteration in London for the simplest route, oregon marque a maximum of five stops betwixt the likes of Bristol, Newport, Crewe, and Edinburgh.
All the stops and timings connected the Brussels-Venice sleeper bid launching successful February 2025
Belgium-Italy:
Venezia Mestre – 3.00pm
Bruxelles Midi/Brussel Zuid – 6.00pm
Breda – 8.31pm
Eindhoven Centraal – 9.11pm
Köln Hbf – 11.38pm
München – 07.20am
Kufstein – 08.52am
Wörgl – 09.05am
Jenbach – 09.27am
Inssbruck Hbf – 09.59am
Brennero – 10.30am
Bressanone – 11.30am
Ponte Gardena-Laion – 11.45am
Bolzano/Bozen – 12.00pm
Verona Porta Nuova – 1.45pm.
Italy-Belgium:
- Venezia Mestre – 4.15pm
- Verona Porta Nuova – 5.30pm
- Bolzano/Bozen – 7.00pm
- Ponte Gardena-Laion – 7.15pm
- Bressanone – 7.30pm
- Brennero – 8.27pm
- Innsbruck Hbf – 9.24pm
- Jenbach – 9.51pm
- Wörgl – 10.12pm
- Kufstein – 10.26pm
- München – 11.45pm
- Köln Hbf – 07.07am
- Eindhoven Centraal – 09.28am
- Breda – 10.20am
- Bruxelles Midi/Brussel Zuid – 12.38pm.
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