Rome and Munich
Ticket booking: www.thetrainline.com
With just less than 1,000km between the cities this is an epic journey that will take you through Bavaria, Austria and the Dolomite mountains before continuing on to Rome or Munich. Each day there are a number of sleeper train options which leave in the evening and arrive the following morning. Ticket prices start at as little as €40 on some of those overnight services while there is also the option to travel through the day with one switch at Bologna.
London and Amsterdam
Ticket booking: www.eurostar.com
This journey became much easier in April 2018 when Eurostar began running trains through the Channel Tunnel between London and Amsterdam three times a day during the week and twice a day at weekends. Trains leave London St Pancras at 7.16am, 11.04am and 5.16pm each day of the week with the journey taking just less than five hours while, in the opposite direction, a switch is required in Brussels but there are seven services a day. Tickets from London start at £35 one-way and €59 one-way from Amsterdam.
London and Glasgow
Ticket booking: www.thetrainline.com
This is definitely one of the easiest journeys to make via train with up to 22 services going between London and Glasgow each day, taking on average four and a half hours and requiring no switches. Ticket prices vary quite a bit with some services available on June 15th, for example, for €48 for a standard ticket while others cost over €100. There are also overnight sleeper options leaving London at 9.15pm and 11.50pm each night during the week and 11.40pm in Glasgow going the other way.
Bucharest and Budapest
Ticket booking: From Bucharest: https://bileteinternationale.cfrcalatori.ro/ro/booking/search; from Budapest: www.mavcsoport.hu.
This is the longest journey on this list in terms of duration but, despite that, it can be done for a very reasonable price. Sleeper trains leave both cities each evening at 7.10pm in Budapest and 5.45pm in Bucharest, arriving the next morning. Prices start at €39 for a couchette or €59 for a bed on the overnight train while there are also options to travel through the day on a 15 hour+ epic journey through Transylvania and the Carpathian mountains for an unbelievably cheap price of €29.
Amsterdam and Munich
Ticket booking: www.bahn.de
There are a few options here with the easiest being via ICE high-speed train which requires just one change – sometimes at Mannheim and sometimes at Dusseldorf – for as little as €39.99, taking about seven and a half hours. Another potential option which is more expensive but allows a bit more sightseeing is to get a morning train from Amsterdam to Cologne (which takes about two hours and 40 minutes), have a day in Cologne and then board an overnight sleeper train at 9.21pm, arriving in Munich at 7.09am.
– This article is part of a series of consumer-based sports stories. If you have any queries, stories or issues regarding travel, tickets, sport on television or anything else you can email rcroke@irishtimes.com or via Twitter @Ruaidhri_Croke.
