Eurostar Links: Beyond Paris and Brussels
Eurostar’s flagship services linking London’s magnificent St Pancras station with Paris and Brussels have been an overwhelming success, transforming London’s relationship with two close continental capitals.
So much well-justified praise is heaped on Eurostar’s capital city links that it is easy to overlook that the rail service through the Channel Tunnel is good for more than merely quick hops to nearby capitals.
Direct trains to the Alps
Last Saturday, Eurostar kicked off its regular season of direct ski-trains, serving some of France’s premier winter sports resorts from London and two other stations in south-east England: Ebbsfleet and Ashford.
Ready to board in St Pancras. Photo © hidden europe magazine
Although the trains are aimed fair and square at the winter sports market, you certainly don’t need to be a skier to use these trains which are a very fine way of traveling from England to the Savoie area of eastern France. The services run through mid-April and operate to Bourg-Saint-Maurice, stopping along the way at Moûtiers-Salins-Brides-les-Bains and Aime-La Plagne. The latter, with its cottage-style stone station building, surely rates as the most rural station on the Eurostar network.
Dash South to Avignon
Tickets go on sale tomorrow (December 22, 2011) for Eurostar’s 2012 season of direct trains from London and Ashford to Avignon in the south of France. Travelers can speed from Kent to the heart of the Provence in less than five hours.
And whereas most French high-speed trains serve Avignon TGV station, the Eurostar services drop passengers at Avignon Centre, just a stone’s throw from the ancient city wall and the Old Town. For Londoners keen to catch some southern sun, the direct Eurostar service to Avignon is hugely more appealing than tackling airport crowds.
Eurostar operates a two-class service on the Avignon route (compared with the choice of three classes on their capital city services). Fares start at £109 return in Standard Class and, for passengers wanting extra space with complimentary meals and drinks, return tickets in Standard Premier are from £249.
Connections through Brussels
We traveled last Wednesday from London to Cologne, an easy 4hr 20min journey including a slick connection from Eurostar onto a German ICE train at Brussels. You can use the Eurostar website to book through journeys from London to Aachen and Cologne in Germany, as well as to any station in the Netherlands or in Belgium.
City center to city center travel times often undercut comparable journeys made by air. For example, the fastest rail connections from London to Rotterdam (changing at Brussels) take less than four hours.
Beyond Paris
Travelers from the UK can use the Eurostar website to book through tickets from London via Paris to a dozen Swiss cities and to over 60 stations across France.
We used this latter option last month on a London to Strasbourg journey, which took 5hrs 15mins. That included time for a change of trains in Paris, requiring an easy ten-minute walk from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de l’Est. One-way fares on this routing start at £55.
Some travelers worry that many itineraries via Paris require a change of station in the French capital. And that is where Lille Europe station comes in handy, as it offers seamless connections between Eurostar and the French high-speed network without the need to switch stations. For example, the same lead-in fare of £55 from London to Strasbourg is also available on routings via Lille.
You can book with Eurostar from London to Lille and connect there onto direct trains to Nice, Toulouse, Marseille, Bordeaux and dozens of other destinations across France. Again, through bookings for most itineraries can be made on the Eurostar website.
Other Links
The regular direct Eurostar trains from London to Marne la Vallée-Chessy are operated mainly for visitors heading to the Disneyland complex east of Paris, but can also be used to link to and from connecting TGV services.
And we have found Eurostar useful for short hops on the continent. For example, Eurostar trains can be used to travel from Lille to both Brussels and Calais.
Rail pass options
Interested in seeing a full list of rail pass options? Visit our booking partner, Rail Europe, to compare rates, destinations covered and see their latest promotions.
About the author
High Speed Trains
I don’t like the new high speed TRAINS. Their stations look & feel like airports, with all the mouth-breathing over-security presence. There are long security lines. A muffin costs $7. Normal TRAIN stations in Europe are usually at least 100 years old and architecturally beautiful. They are just fun places to be. The high speed TRAIN stations are modern and sterile, with lots of restrictions. They won’t let your friends & family onto the platform to meet your TRAIN or to see you off. I don’t like the self-important paranoia of high velocity TRAIN stations.
High speed TRAINS have airline style seats, all facing forward. They don’t recline.
I don’t like the new high speed TRAINS also because of their speed. I don’t want to travel from Lisbon to Berlin in 3 hours. I want to enjoy it, see the forests and beautiful towns go by, catch up on my reading, meet new people in my compartment or bar car, eat a real meal in the rolling restaurant, & fall asleep at night in a real bed with linens, to the rolling cadence of the TRAIN on tracks.
You have to sleep the night anyway, why not do it on a TRAIN, while moving toward your destination? Why not have time to read up on your destination city?
TRAIN station ticket window clerks are usually rushed, and just assume without asking that Westerners want the fastest TRAIN. If you want to travel at normal speed rather than on the new high tech 100+ mph “bullet TRAIN,” before you get in the ticket line look in your guidebook and find the word for “high speed TRAIN” in the local language. Write on a slip of paper: “No / Nein / Nyet [word for high speed train].” In Italy the high speed TRAINS are called Frecciarossa (red arrow). In France, TRAIN à Grande Vitesse (TGV). In Germany, ICE. In England, British Rail Class 395. Tickets on these high velocity TRAINS cost much more than normal TRAINS, so you’ll save money while you have a better time.
A PLANE takes 1.5 hours for all the passengers to board, all filing through one tiny door loaded with luggage. Passengers board TRAINS thru about 40 doors simultaneously. So TRAINS don’t have to delay everyone 1.5 hours… they stop only 1 to 5 minutes at a station.
One must drive about an hour out of town to reach an airport. (No neighborhood wants the noise.) Consider: 1.) TRAIN stations are in the center of towns, and 2.) TRAIN stations are much more numerous than airports. These 2 factors make TRAIN stations closer to you.
One must arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure. You can arrive at a TRAIN station 10 minutes before departure!
After finally boarding your PLANE, you sit for another 45 minutes or so before the wheels begin to slowly turn. You taxi at snail’s pace a long way, then stop again. The captain announces, “We’re fifth in line for takeoff, thank you for your patience.” Compare the TRAIN: Within 2 minutes of boarding you’re at full speed toward your destination.
On a PLANE, finally your turn to take off comes and the PLANE engines begin to scream, about 20 feet from your ears. They continue their high decibel screaming throughout the flight. On a TRAIN the engine is far away from your wagon; usually it cannot be heard.
On a TRAIN there is no charge for any luggage; take whatever weight you want. Wheel them right into your 6-person compartment and one of your new compartment mates will help you lift them onto the overhead rack. If you need anything during the trip, it’s right there (not inaccessible, as on a PLANE). Upon arrival, no waiting 45 minutes for your bag(s) to show up on the airport luggage carousel.
You see so much from the huge TRAIN windows, whereas from the tiny PLANE windows you see only cloud tops. You really can’t see anything of the towns & cities of Norway or Croatia from 30,000 ft. And if you don’t have a window seat you don’t see even the cloud tops.
PLANE seats recline only 1 inch, making sleep impossible or uncomfortable, but you can get real bunk beds on a TRAIN. The most popular TRAIN trips in Europe, as they used to be in the US, are those that depart a major city around 10pm and arrive in another major city around 8 a.m. These sleeper cars allow one to travel while sleeping in a real bed with sheets, rocked to sleep by the gentle rolling of the TRAIN. So much for TRAINS being “time consuming.”
It’s important that TRAIN wagons be divided into several compartments with bench seats facing each other, as they have historically always been until recent decades. These compartments are vastly superior to having airline style seats arranged like on an airliner all facing forward. Some of the most interesting people can be met on a TRAIN if the seating is right. It’s nice to have your own little compartment, 3 people facing 3 people, a large window, a folding out table, 6 bunk beds that fold down at night, and a door that locks at night to keep out the sneak thieves!
In the old wagons passengers can open the window in their compartment. This is good for saying goodbye to friends & relatives standing on the platform to see you off. In former Soviet countries, private women sell home cooked food thru the windows to passengers.
PLANE windows don’t open and they have stuffy, recirculated air because of the high cost of heating the fresh air from outside, which at 30,000 feet is below zero. The stewardess’ union is always complaining about the unhealthy stale air, but airline executives refuse to spend the money to heat enough fresh air. TRAINS don’t have this problem since they are at ground level where the air is warm.
Trains are more fuel efficient than PLANES. For the same gallon of fuel one may travel 7 times as far by TRAIN as by PLANE. So PLANEs pollute the air 7 times as much as TRAINS.
But the most important thing about TRAIN travel is that it is a lot of FUN!