Another Brick in the Wall

Now and again when I'm browsing through the Great Rail Journeys brochure one particular trip stands out, and I've always liked the thought of their Grand Imperial Cities holiday, visiting some of the capitals of Europe. It has therefore long been on what I call "the list," a list that has no physical existence yet but is a mental wish list of places and routes which are to be visited eventually, but in the current brochure the itinerary has been combined with a river cruise on the Danube to create an even more interesting (and longer) holiday, so this particular list item rapidly rose to the top and was booked for 2018. We had GRJ also book a hotel in London for the night before departure to ensure that we would be able to catch the morning Eurostar with which the holiday was to begin, and our First Class tickets to and from London at the beginning and the end. Booked and paid-for, the only thing was to wait for the dates to come round (distracted by the Birmingham holiday so that the wait was not too excruciating), and check our EHIC validity, order the currency etc..

The holiday itself began on a Monday so we travelled to London on the Sunday afternoon. The Virgin Trains East Coast on board staff were excellent as usual and we enjoyed smoked salmon sandwiches, crisps and biscuits on the way to Kings Cross. Wine is not included in the complimentary refreshments at weekends, but I bought Prosecco from the cafe-bar to get the holiday off to an appropriate start. From Kings Cross it was a stroll along the Euston Road to the Ambassadors Bloomsbury hotel which had been booked for us, and needing no further refreshment after Sunday lunch and the light meal on the train we were able to get to bed early ready for the morning's excitement!

Eurostar E320 awaiting departure at St Pancras

Eurostar light breakfast

The first train of the tour itself was the 08:54 Eurostar departure from St Pancras to Brussels. Because of the terrorist threat level, check-in for Eurostar is currently one hour, so the latest we could check in was 07:54, and we needed to get to St Pancras well before then to meet our tour manager and get our tickets from him, which meant that we did not have time for breakfast at the hotel, but they made up a boxed breakfast for us which we then carried to the station in the morning and were able to eat after check-in while waiting to board the train. Arriving at the station was lovely: up the carriage ramp to what had been the main entrance at platform level, because that was where, on what is now entitled the Grand Terrace, the Great Rail Journeys office is located and where we were to meet our manager, Steven, and the rest of the group.

Thalys sweet snack

The check-in was busy and the waiting area well-filled with people waiting for the 08:31 train to Amsterdam as well as our train, and when the Amsterdam people had gone up to their train people started arriving for the following Paris departure. It is a huge waiting area but Eurostar's trains are the longest in Britain and take a lot of people, so they need a lot of space. 

Our packed breakfast, together with coffee purchased from the bar in the waiting area, occupied our time until our train was announced and we made our way up to the platform. I was delighted to see that the train consisted of one of Eurostar's new E320 sets which I'd never used before. The comfort and facilities lived up to expectations, and as we sped across Kent we were served the Eurostar light breakfast which, added to the corn flakes and yogurt from the hotel box, meant that we were well fed for the start of our holiday.

At Brussel Zuid we changed to the Thalys high-speed train to Cologne, with another included snack, this time with wine, and then at Cologne caught the ICE (inter city express) train to Berlin, a new route for us, a new type of train and, most importantly, a new destination. No included refreshments on this part of the trip but as dinner was still some way off we bought wine and cake to ensure we were not ravenous on arrival at Berlin. This was not an especially fast part of the journey, although speed did pick up a bit on the high speed line after Hannover. One highlight of this leg of the journey was that we passed through Wuppertal, with many glimpses of the Schwebebahn underslung monorail line. We arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the new triple-decker central station recently built to provide a fitting railway station for the reunified capital, and were taken by coach to the hotel, the Maritim, an enormous establishment near the Tiergarten. Dinner was served soon after our arrival and we slept our first night of what was to be an interesting tour of some hugely significant historic capital cities: indeed, I thought as my mind drifted, we were already in our third capital of the day!

Replica on the site of Checkpoint Charlie

On this tour we only had half a day in Berlin, a taster which taught us that a proper visit will be necessary in the near future: so much (recent) history in one city. We were taken on a coach tour of the city with several stops at which we could visit briefly some of the sites associated with the Berlin Wall, and we were shown the new buildings now occupying what was empty land between the two walls and sites near the wall which had not been worth developing when a Soviet invasion had been expected at any time. Along with other international tourists we visited the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol both of this city and, when it was stranded in no man's land, its tragic recent history. 

Looking down to our platforms at Berlin Hbf

Our tour finished back at the railway station where we awaited our train to Prague for the next stage of the holiday. The train indicator showed that for that day there was no restaurant car on our train, so there was a rapid scurry round to buy sandwiches at the station and then we boarded the train and were off deeper into eastern Europe. It was a lovely, sunny day and the line beyond Dresden closely followed the River Elbe with its tree-lined valley punctuated by rocky outcrops and attractive towns and villages. Although there was no restaurant car, catering staff had fixed up a makeshift buffet in a compartment in one of the second class coaches, so we were able to buy coffee to go with our lunch. There was the occasional shower but basically this was a long journey in very comfortable seats with fantastic sunlit scenery. We were heading south, but also inching further east than we'd ever been before, and soon the spectacular sight of Prague greeted us as we glided through the outskirts of what must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. That city will wait for the next instalment of this international adventure ... along with Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and a host of smaller places along the Danube.

Of all the places we visited on this trip, I think it is Berlin and Vienna to which we must return before too long. Has anyone any comment to make on Berlin?

Summer Alpine Adventure 1: Via London to Cologne

Last year's proposed trip to the Swiss Alps had to be called off when Great Rail Journeys cancelled the one we'd planned because of too few bookings (that's how we ended up going to the French Riviera in 2016 instead, so no hard feelings!) but we booked again a slightly different tour in 2017 which promised an even better holiday. Great Rail Journeys offer one of their “Signature” tours to Sankt Moritz and Zermatt in the summer, with day trips out to Tirano and other places in Italy and southern Switzerland, travelling out via Cologne and back via Colmar, all First Class and with the services of a tour manager throughout. We booked the tour and asked Great Rail Journeys to book our tickets to and from London and a night in London before the holiday as well.

And so on a Tuesday morning we packed our cases and made our way to Stamford station for the 13:00 train to Peterborough. Our tickets were valid on any train so we just went when convenient and caught the next main line train to London and looked for free seats in the almost empty coach L. There was one other passenger in the half of the coach that we joined, and it was someone we knew, so we moved along and joined her. The catering team seemed understaffed once more but our First Class hostess coped very well. Although she had run out of sandwiches she fetched us copious quantities of crisps, bisuits and cake, and plenty of wine. An odd lunch, but OK for our purposes. Amazing how quickly a journey passes in good company and with two glasses of wine, and we seemed to be in London in no time at all.

We made our way to our hotel, the Ambassadors Bloomsbury, just a few minutes along the Euston Road, and after check-in we went to Sloane Square to have tea and cake on the top floor of Peter Jones department store – it is a John Lewis branch and we each had a voucher for free tea and cake during June. We returned to the hotel by bus to Oxford Circus and walking from there, dodging the occasional shower. It is always a joy to walk through Bloomsbury.

As it happened, our tour manager was staying in the same hotel, as were eight Australian guests who were booked on the same tour. Although we made brief acquaintance on the Tuesday evening we made our own arrangements for a light supper, salad at the nearby Prezzo Euston, and met the whole group for the Champagne reception at St Pancras International station on the Wednesday morning. The Champagne start is one of the features of the Signature tours: we checked in at the Great Rail Journeys office on the Grand Terrace at St Pancras and were taken across to the Searcy's Champagne Bar where Ray, our tour manager, was waiting with the first few guests. Soon all thirty-two were gathered and we were all given our Eurostar tickets and made our own way through check-in and to the waiting area for the train to Brussels.

Soon we were called to board the train and were on our way. Ours was a refurbished original Eurostar set, known as a E300, just like the one we went on to Marseille last year. As we passed through the Channel Tunnel we were enjoying the hot lunch provided in Standard Premier Class, with wine and coffee.

The atrium of the Maritim Hotel at Kiln
The dining room is separate from this huge banqueting area!

There was a change of train at Brussels and we had some time to browse around the shops at the station before we went on to our first hotel at Cologne. Our connection was a Thalys high-speed train which was indicated thirty minutes late. More browsing and back to the platform and we were on our way, but further difficulties meant that half an hour from Cologne we had to be diverted and after a short excursion into the Netherlands arrived two hours late at our hotel. Our tour manager had booked ahead and had dinner put back but it did mean that we had no time to stroll through the city before bed, which was a pity as there are some pleasant walks to be had. 

At dinner we met some of the thirty people with whom we'd be spending the ten days of this holiday, and we slept well in a very comfortable room overlooking the spacious atrium of this huge hotel. Back to the station in the morning and we were on a Swiss express train to Basel where our adventure in Switzerland began. The ride to Basel was an adventure in itself, much of it along the west bank of the Rhine with wonderful views of castles, vineyards and towns as we made our way south. We had seen it from the other direction on our return journey in winter three years before and it was great to see it in the sunshine now.

Photographs from this part of the holiday are available on Flickr if you are interested.

Climbing the Swiss Alps - part 3: Mountains and Valleys

There were several suggestions for the free Saturday and we had decided to wait and see what (a) the weather and (b) fatigue might help us choose. The weather was fine and sunny and we felt fine so we took another trip into the mountains to the famous resorts of Klosters and Davos: we took our provisions with us but kept an open mind about eating out for lunch if we saw a suitable restaurant. Again, we left Chur on a metre-gauge train which travelled slowly through the suburbs before climbing, at first slowly but later much more steeply, into the Alps: these narrow-gauge trains are much more able to take the tight curves needed to climb the hills than a standard-gauge train would be able to do. All are electric and many Swiss lines always have been, plentiful cheap hydroelectric power being widely available here, and railway-building having started relatively late. As the valley is left behind the trees grow more dense and the snow becomes more and more of a feature until we are again in entirely snow-covered landscape. There had obviously been overnight snow and the snow-ploughs, snow-blowers and brooms and shovels were hard at work clearing it away while the sun was beginning a slow thaw in places it could reach.

We left the first train at Klosters. The train was going on through the lengthy Vereina Tunnel to Tirano in Italy. We went for a stroll through Klosters: no sign of any British princes but we did bump into another member of our group who sensibly warned us not to stand under any trees as they were thawing nicely and dropping their snow in great lumps, although the temperature in the town was still a degree or so below freezing. Little attempt is made by the Swiss authorities to clear the roads and pavements of snow, reliance rather being placed on individuals to cope properly with the ice and snow. With our ice-grips on our boots we could walk quite normally on pavements covered in pack-ice and we had a very pleasant walk around Klosters before taking our next train on to Davos.

Davos was a much bigger place even higher in the mountains and from the town several cable cars, ski lifts and funicular railways took people up the surrounding mountains to ski or snowboard back down. We looked for the funicular to Schatzalp recommended by our tour manager, bought our tickets and rode up the mountain. At the top of the funicular railway was a huge hotel and a timber-built restaurant overlooking the valley with the town far below and mountain-peaks far above on the opposite side.




Those going up to ski could ride up further by ski-lift but we went to the restaurant for a delicious meal to a local recipe, a variation on the traditional rosti with cheese and ham – full of fat and calories but this altitude and these temperatures some sustenance is needed! Back down from Schatzalp we looked around the shops in Davos and returned to the station to catch a train down to Filisur and so home to Chur.






This time the weather between Filisur and Chur on the Albula Line was much sunnier and I was able to photograph some sights I had missed the evening before.

When we arrived back at Chur we had an evening stroll around the city – the oldest in Switzerland, apparently, and spent the rest of the evening in our room writing this article (!) and packing for the morning. In the morning our main cases were to be out for the porters by 7.30am for transporting to the station while we had our breakfast. By now all that was in the the cases was clothes for laundering, plus the winter boots we'd no longer be needing, for in the morning we were to leave Switzerland.

After breakfast on Sunday we all checked out and met at the agreed place to board the main line train for Zurich. Our cases awaited us on the platform and we went to our allocated seating on the top deck of a multiplex train. We soared through the Swiss countryside (for the first few minutes along the same route as we had taken on the metre-gauge train the day before) and beside two of the wonderful lakes that are as characteristic of this wonderful country as the mountains.




 In Zurich we changed trains and with half an hour more than we needed for this there was a chance to have a very quick look at the city centre while our tour manager kindly looked after our luggage on the departure platform for our onward connection. This was a through train to Cologne (Koln) where we were to spend our final night before travelling back on Eurostar to the UK.

A long journey along the Rhine Valley took us out of Switzerland and through Germany past vineyards, castles, factories and churches and the great river itself, through the former West German capital of Bonn and into Cologne with its distinctive gothic cathedral. We had brought our picnic lunch, bought from a wonderful baker's shop at Chur station, but beer from the trolley and hot chocolate in the restaurant car were also welcome as the scenery slipped by.

 Our hotel in Cologne was a short walk from the station and again there was a porterage facility to help with our cases. We went for a walk around the city and popped into the cathedral briefly (it was during the evening service so we could only stand at the back and listen to the marvellous choral music) before a buffet supper for the last evening with our new friends made on this tour.

In the morning it was an early start: we delivered our larger cases to the reception area for porterage to the station and consumed our breakfast, which this time was very similar to an English buffet breakfast. We set off to the station and awaited our through train to Brussels where we would change for London. This was a French “Thalys” high-speed train with inclusive light meal as part of the First Class offer, much like Eurostar. The interesting thing about the trip home was that we were served something to eat and drink at no extra cost on all four of the trains we used, even having a drink and a biscuit on the short hop from Peterborough to Stamford! So we needed to purchase nothing along the way, although we did have a glass of wine while we waited in Brussels: South station is well outside the city centre of Brussels and although we did go for a short stroll there is really nothing to see in the short time we had, apart from the amazing sight of taxis queuing for custom right around the entire station. The station site does include a shopping area and we looked around there and bought a thank-you card for our wonderful tour manager, in which we placed our tip for handing to him as we said farewell on the approach to London.

And so to the final stage of the organised tour, the Eurostar back to St Pancras International, with the light meal including wine, water and coffee. At St Pancras we made our way over to Kings Cross with over an hour to spare before the departure of the train on which I had reserved seats, but we decided to go for the next one to Peterborough, a Leeds departure which had plenty of room in First Class and there we had our third on-board meal of the day – a bit more substantial than the others with full-sized sandwiches, cake, crisps and wine.

At Peterborough we are now becoming used to using the new platform 7 for departures to Stamford, although building work is not yet quite complete. First Class is always at an end of the Stansted-Birmingham trains but one never knows which end, nor whether there will be three or only two coaches, but in this case First was at the front end, right where the refreshment trolley is loaded onto the train (there are no refreshment facilities between Stansted and Peterborough), so we were the first people the caterer visited and he had time to give us our included biscuits and insisted that as we didn't have time to consume a cup of tea before Stamford we take a bottle of water to take away – so we did!

Well, it was intended to be the trip of a lifetime and so far it has met that expectation. We have to go back, though, as soon as we can afford it and at a different time of the year, and I've a feeling that if we live long enough it will become one of many trips competing for that title. It is hard to specify highlights, but they have to include dining aboard the Glacier Express among snow-covered mountains and standing on Gornergrat and looking across at Matterhorn. The entire adventure was filled with exciting new experiences that were certainly not exaggerated in the tour company's advertising and will go on being a joyful memory for a long time to come.