As the forum helped us out with a couple of questions planning our recent trip, I thought I'd let you know how it all went. Who knows, there may be something of use or interest ...
We started off Eurostar St Pancras to Paris. Nothing much to note there, it was on time.
Next up was a Lyria train to Zurich, from Gare du Lyon. We took RER line D from Gare du Nord to Gare du Lyon. As usual I'd built in a significant contingency time and had over an hour to kill, so we waited in Starbucks in Hall 2. We've done this before. Starbucks isn't too crowded and has a big departures screen. It also sells coffee. The train to Zurich, Lyria 2919 was again uneventful and comfortable and we zoomed through pleasant French countryside, then trundled more sedately once we crossed into Switzerland.
Next morning it got interesting. Our ÖBB Railjet RJ 161 from Zurich was showing "Ausfall" - cancelled. Fortunately the info office at Zurich is open at 6am on a Sunday, and the lady was very helpful (after ticking us off for not taking a number for the non existent queue). There were scheduled engineering works in Liechtenstein. So we took a more northerly, and slower, route to Innsbruck and picked up a Vienna train there. All the on-train staff were helpful. The journey to Innsbruck was very beautiful. We were fortunate that there was a Vienna train waiting to go from the adjacent platform at Innsbruck so there was no waiting needed, and we were only an hour or so late into Vienna. This wasn't a problem as we had no plans for the rest of the day.
Now, I bought that ticket from RailEurope, and it didn't give me a seat reservation at the time, despite having selected that specific train, but I thought nothing of it. So something, somewhere, was aware of the planned works. It would have been nice to have been warned, but by whom? RailEurope? ÖBB? Anyway, no harm done and lesson learned that if you can't get a reservation when buying online, something is up.
In Vienna we bought 7-day tickets for the metro and trams from the machine. Very easy. Once you have validated your tickets to start the clock, there's no need to use them again unless an inspector appears (which didn't happen). There are no automatic gates on the Vienna metro.
Next stop, Venice. ÖBB had warned me by email that there was a strike in Italy on our day of travel, but were vague about the implications. So I went to the Hauptbahnhof at Vienna and asked. The guy there seemed very stressed out, dealing with multiple people at once. He told me direct trains were guaranteed. I wasn't convinced but as it turned out he was right. Our train RJ131 from Vienna at 06:40 ran to time and was another beautiful journey.
In Venice we bought multi-day tickets for the Vaporetto boats. Again an easy purchase from a machine. Despite only being a paper ticket they work on a touch-in basis to open the barriers at some of the stops (others you just walk in). Make sure you don't try to go in through the exit. It doesn't work!
Now for the home leg. We got the NJ 236 Night Jet from Venice to Stuttgart. It was a bit alarming to arrive at the station and see that the train is advertised on the board as destination Vienna, and no mention of Stuttgart at all on the departure board. I figured that it would be split somewhere and this was actually the case (it split at Salzburg, with the front of the train turning east and heading to Vienna and the rear with us in it going west to Stuttgart) but all the same it was a relief to see the "Stuttgart" paper label on our train door.
The sleeper was distinctly roomier than the Caledonian sleeper that we used last year and very comfortable. The steward asked us if our toilet was working (it was) and said he'd provide a form for us to get compensation if it wasn't, so they must have been having problems. We slept well until about 04:30 when there was a loud knock on the door and it was the border police (we were in or near Salzburg about to cross from Austria to Germany) asking for passports and ids. Fortunately our passports were to hand and the policewoman returned them after a few minutes.
We were about 20 minutes late into Stuttgart, but we had plenty of slack built into the schedule so we still had two hours to kill in Stuttgart. Stuttgart station is a building site and there is little to no seating. It's quite a long walk (several minutes - it passed the time) out of the station down a long ramp where we found a cafe to sit in for a while. It was when I saw a hoarding with "Stuttgart 21" on it that I recalled seeing a programme on TV over a year ago about this building project and how it wasn't going entirely to plan.
Next leg was Deutsche Bahn ICE9574 Stuttgart to Paris Est. DB have not been kind to us in the past, so we had a 3 hour buffer to get from Paris Est to Paris Nord and the check in to Eurostar. As things turned out we needed some of it, as the train was 25 minutes late into Paris Est.
We took the Metro line 5 one stop from Paris Est to Nord, partly because it was easier than walking with luggage, and partly to use up some of our stock of T-Plus tickets before they go extinct.
That left us with a long wait at Eurostar Paris. We asked about bumping us to an earlier train, but the fee was €50 each, and as it turned out they didn't have spare Standard Premier places anyway so we didn't do that. I don't particularly like the Eurostar terminals, they are always so crowded, worse than the airports the we go out of our way to avoid. Eurostar into London was a few minutes late but nothing worth mentioning.
All in all everything went moderately smoothly. All tickets were first class, except for Eurostar which was Standard Premier and the Nightjet which was a cabin. All seats were reserved except for the Zurich-Vienna leg as mentioned above. We had generous contingency built in for changing trains but generally didn't need it.
Thanks to all on here who gave advice while we were planning this jaunt.
We started off Eurostar St Pancras to Paris. Nothing much to note there, it was on time.
Next up was a Lyria train to Zurich, from Gare du Lyon. We took RER line D from Gare du Nord to Gare du Lyon. As usual I'd built in a significant contingency time and had over an hour to kill, so we waited in Starbucks in Hall 2. We've done this before. Starbucks isn't too crowded and has a big departures screen. It also sells coffee. The train to Zurich, Lyria 2919 was again uneventful and comfortable and we zoomed through pleasant French countryside, then trundled more sedately once we crossed into Switzerland.
Next morning it got interesting. Our ÖBB Railjet RJ 161 from Zurich was showing "Ausfall" - cancelled. Fortunately the info office at Zurich is open at 6am on a Sunday, and the lady was very helpful (after ticking us off for not taking a number for the non existent queue). There were scheduled engineering works in Liechtenstein. So we took a more northerly, and slower, route to Innsbruck and picked up a Vienna train there. All the on-train staff were helpful. The journey to Innsbruck was very beautiful. We were fortunate that there was a Vienna train waiting to go from the adjacent platform at Innsbruck so there was no waiting needed, and we were only an hour or so late into Vienna. This wasn't a problem as we had no plans for the rest of the day.
Now, I bought that ticket from RailEurope, and it didn't give me a seat reservation at the time, despite having selected that specific train, but I thought nothing of it. So something, somewhere, was aware of the planned works. It would have been nice to have been warned, but by whom? RailEurope? ÖBB? Anyway, no harm done and lesson learned that if you can't get a reservation when buying online, something is up.
In Vienna we bought 7-day tickets for the metro and trams from the machine. Very easy. Once you have validated your tickets to start the clock, there's no need to use them again unless an inspector appears (which didn't happen). There are no automatic gates on the Vienna metro.
Next stop, Venice. ÖBB had warned me by email that there was a strike in Italy on our day of travel, but were vague about the implications. So I went to the Hauptbahnhof at Vienna and asked. The guy there seemed very stressed out, dealing with multiple people at once. He told me direct trains were guaranteed. I wasn't convinced but as it turned out he was right. Our train RJ131 from Vienna at 06:40 ran to time and was another beautiful journey.
In Venice we bought multi-day tickets for the Vaporetto boats. Again an easy purchase from a machine. Despite only being a paper ticket they work on a touch-in basis to open the barriers at some of the stops (others you just walk in). Make sure you don't try to go in through the exit. It doesn't work!
Now for the home leg. We got the NJ 236 Night Jet from Venice to Stuttgart. It was a bit alarming to arrive at the station and see that the train is advertised on the board as destination Vienna, and no mention of Stuttgart at all on the departure board. I figured that it would be split somewhere and this was actually the case (it split at Salzburg, with the front of the train turning east and heading to Vienna and the rear with us in it going west to Stuttgart) but all the same it was a relief to see the "Stuttgart" paper label on our train door.
The sleeper was distinctly roomier than the Caledonian sleeper that we used last year and very comfortable. The steward asked us if our toilet was working (it was) and said he'd provide a form for us to get compensation if it wasn't, so they must have been having problems. We slept well until about 04:30 when there was a loud knock on the door and it was the border police (we were in or near Salzburg about to cross from Austria to Germany) asking for passports and ids. Fortunately our passports were to hand and the policewoman returned them after a few minutes.
We were about 20 minutes late into Stuttgart, but we had plenty of slack built into the schedule so we still had two hours to kill in Stuttgart. Stuttgart station is a building site and there is little to no seating. It's quite a long walk (several minutes - it passed the time) out of the station down a long ramp where we found a cafe to sit in for a while. It was when I saw a hoarding with "Stuttgart 21" on it that I recalled seeing a programme on TV over a year ago about this building project and how it wasn't going entirely to plan.
Next leg was Deutsche Bahn ICE9574 Stuttgart to Paris Est. DB have not been kind to us in the past, so we had a 3 hour buffer to get from Paris Est to Paris Nord and the check in to Eurostar. As things turned out we needed some of it, as the train was 25 minutes late into Paris Est.
We took the Metro line 5 one stop from Paris Est to Nord, partly because it was easier than walking with luggage, and partly to use up some of our stock of T-Plus tickets before they go extinct.
That left us with a long wait at Eurostar Paris. We asked about bumping us to an earlier train, but the fee was €50 each, and as it turned out they didn't have spare Standard Premier places anyway so we didn't do that. I don't particularly like the Eurostar terminals, they are always so crowded, worse than the airports the we go out of our way to avoid. Eurostar into London was a few minutes late but nothing worth mentioning.
All in all everything went moderately smoothly. All tickets were first class, except for Eurostar which was Standard Premier and the Nightjet which was a cabin. All seats were reserved except for the Zurich-Vienna leg as mentioned above. We had generous contingency built in for changing trains but generally didn't need it.
Thanks to all on here who gave advice while we were planning this jaunt.
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