After a whole lot less planning than our previous adventure (but it still took a decent amount, let's be honest!), the three intrepid Buckleys packed their small backpacks and headed for Birmingham Airport. Not because we were flying anywhere exciting, oh no... we were letting the trains take the strain!
Train 1 (not sure if this counts as a train) - the monorail linking Birmingham Airport with Birmingham International Station. 2 minutes.
Train 2. Definitely a train... Birmingham International to Euston. 70 minutes.
Then a short walk to St Pancras, including a very shiny car
Lunch at St Pancras, and then Train 3, an exciting under-the-sea kind of train, St Pancras to Brussels. 2 hours 5 minutes.
Time for a light tea in Brussels and then Train 4, Brussels to Prague. 15 hours 30 mins.
We had 3 couchettes in a compartment with 2 others. It was not massively spacious - there wasn't much space between the berths at all, and when the berths were down there was no room to sit up on them... lie down please!
And as it was dark for the vast majority of the journey it was also slightly less exciting... Note to self: next time you plan an adventure, think about it first!
However, there was something a little magical and certainly very different about sleeping/dozing on a bed on a train, feeling the motion of the train through your whole body. And also peering out of the curtains to see sleepy towns and cities go by.
The route was Brussels, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague (with a few other smaller town stops in between).
The last couple of hours of the journey were probably the most interesting, for me at least, as we were following the Elbe river through former East Germany and into the Czech Republic. And then the final sweep into the city of Prague, again mostly following the river (now the Vltava, which feeds into the Elbe, as I'm sure you knew!).
We arrived in Prague, not very refreshed but certainly ready to stretch our legs!
No comments:
Post a Comment