(MSNBC posted the following travel column by Reid Bramblett of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel on its website on May 6.)
NEW YORK — Part of the romance to a European adventure is clattering across the countryside in a passenger train, watching Alps, medieval hilltowns, and ancient spired cities slide past the window. The new generation of high-speed trains feel a bit more like flying along the ground rather than clattering along, but the views are the same, and they can get you from city to city in no time. But in an age when no-frills airlines are increasingly drawing in time-pressed travelers, the speediest–and most expensive–trains in Europe are fighting back with 30 to 50 percent off this summer.
The biggest threat to romantic, old-fashioned train travel these days really is coming from from no-frills airlines, which can turn a half-day rail journey into an hour-long flight for roughly the same price as a train ticket (maybe a skosh more).
As much as I love train travel–though I detest the new, commuter style straight-through rail cars which are rapidly replacing the old six-seat compartment configuration–I have more and more opted instead for a quick and easy plane ride on easyJet, Ryanair, or some other no-frills/low-cost airline. Sometimes, a flight even works out to be cheaper, especially since Europe’s hyper-fast, ultra-modern trains charge such increasingly high prices.
Well, the folks who run those trains may finally be seeing the light. The main US reseller of European rail tickets an passes, Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com), is offering several discounts for summer travel on the most popular and trafficked train runs in Northern Europe: the Eurostar between Paris and London, and the Thalys trains connecting Paris to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
CHUNNEL MORE CHEAPLY
The Eurostar rockets from London to Paris in three hours via the Channel Tunnel (well, on the British side it doesn’t so much rocket as crawl, due to some poor planning in track engineering). Normally, a second class ticket costs $130 round-trip. With this 30 percent off sale, you can get it for $90 round-trip–but you gotta plan way, way in advance; 60 days in advance, to be precise.
A trip through the Chunnel is a bit like the world’s most boring theme park ride. Everyone seems excited the first time they take it, perhaps at the technomarvel aspect of rocketing at 186 mph through a 31-mile tunnel buried 150 under the English Channel. But in point of fact, a ride through the Channel Tunnel adds up to 20 minutes of a gentle rocking motion while you sit in a bright train car surrounded by blackness–sort of like a well-lit “love tunnel” ride (note: you must provide your own love).
PUTTERING AROUND NORTHERN EUROPE
Europe’s “red trains” are the high-speed Thalys runs linking Paris with Brussels (in under and hour and a half), Amsterdam (4 hours 15 minutes), and Cologne (4 hours). There are a couple of Rail Europe Thalys discounts kicking around this summer, including 50 percent off second and first class tickets on all Thalys routes if booked between May 15 and Aug 15 (for travel between June 15 and Aug 31). That means a Paris-Brussels ticket in second class now costs $41 one-way; Paris to or from Amsterdam is now $54.50 each way in second class.
What’s more, a separate “All Belgium” promotion mans you can take that Paris-Brussels ticket and, for just $1 to $11 more, tack on a ticket to any other Belgian train station on the same day. That’s good news since, truthfully, Brussels only has a half-day’s worth of top-notch attractions. Your time in the land of rich chocolates, blond beers, and centralized European government agencies (I know; it was sounding like so much fun until that last one) would be much better spent elsewhere in Belgium, perhaps enjoying the museums and nightlife of Antwerp (normally, a ticket there costs $16). Or, even better, discover the lovely (and highly underrated) canal-blessed city of Bruges, much of it seemingly frozen in its fourteen century heyday (train fare to Bruges usually runs $21).
In a third Thalys promotion, valid only for this spring (purchase by June 15 for travel through that date), you can get 40 percent off the second class far on the Paris-Cologne route ($37 each way) or Brussels-Cologne ($19 each way).
(Associate Editor Reid Bramblett wrote travel guidebooks for Eyewitness, Frommer’s, and the Idiot’s and For Dummies series (yes, both of them) before joining the Budget Travel staff in 2002.)