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Given the choice, I would do all my travel by train. I don't like planes (uncomfortable tin cans unnaturally rocketing through space) or boats (uncomfortable tin cans bobbing around on the ever moving surface of the water). I'm down with road trips, but for distance, you can't beat the train (okay, it's a string of tin cans rattling along, lurching at stops, and who knows when you'll depart, much less arrive?) I love that trains have space, that you can walk around, that you can look in to back yards and back doors as you roll by... I love the romance of train stations too, standing on the platforms waiting for the noise to start, wandering around under vast ceilings looking at reader boards, watching the gritty and the glam come and go. I love everything about taking the train, just about anywhere.
Once, I met a friend at the station in Salzburg, Austria, and we stood in the entry way of the train station restaurant watching a tango dance while all around us, the trains came and went. I met a sex therapist in a llama boa on a trip to Eugene, Oregon, and on the same train, some time before that, I met a 20something woman who was training to be a cop specializing in drug busts. Some Dutch ladies fed me on a train from Venice and in India, I woke up in the middle of the night to look out of my cabin and in the hallway, two Sikh men were unrolling their turbans the entire length of the rail car. Stop me, I can go on and on. So can any number of other travelers and that's our segue in to the links...
Trains are the most common and convenient way to travel within Europe. You can see beautiful country side as you journey to your next destination, and European trains are modern, clean and very efficient. We booked all our train travel on www.Raileurope.com.
We traveled from Rome to Florence and then to Venice by train, each trip lasting about two hours. We took the AVE, a very fast train traveling upwards of 300 KM per hour, from Madrid to Barcelona in under three hours. And we took the CHUNNEL from Paris to London, what a great system! We departed from the center of Paris, and arrived two and half hours later in the center of London. Gone are the Hydrofoil days of yonder!-- Mamarazzi Knows Best
After a long day yesterday and a great night sleep, we decided it was about time that we sorted out our train ticket to Xi-an.
One bit of advise, it is always better to get a little help. Earlier this week we decided to get out train ticket to Xi-an ,it went rather smoothly to our knowledge, until we meet 3 'Brits' doing the same journey as us. However there train ticket they purchased was twice the price as ours. At first we thought we got a great deal. To good to be true, it wasn't until someone said it was a seating ticket rather than a sleeper which we requested.
It is always good to book a overnight train as you save on accommodation. Later that evening we decided to have a good look at our ticket and realized that it was going to the wrong place, Tai shan, not Xi'an, in mandarin/useless English pronunciation they are pretty similar sounding. To our knowledge it is a small village south towards. Now we understand why the lady was giving use funny looks at the station, probably not many travelers visit this area, and that it was half the price of the other travelers tickets.--Brad and Leah's Great Adventure
Well, there was but one thing to do, try and open the door for the first time. Reaching under the mattress I tried the door and sure enough I popped out onto the floor of the dirty train hallway. Several of my things endeavored to follow me as John held the baby and asked if I was okay. I spoke too soon, "yeah, I'm okay.... AHHHH" and at just that moment, I raised my head and found myself face to face with an upside down rooster. He looked like he was dead but from my understanding of the old woman who carried the thing slung on her back like some wee babe, he was asleep. Apparently she was able to rock the animal to sleep so
