Across Europe

London

Paris

Brussels

Amsterdam

Münster

In the spring of 2000 Rose and I decided to indulge Isaac's love of trains by using them as our way to travel across Europe on our way to visit Omi Marga in Münster. Le Train à Grande Vitesse - the high-speed trains - would make it easier to plan a multi-city voyage and get us around in style. We could take the yellow TGV Eurostar from London's Waterloo Station to Paris' Gard du Nord. From Paris it would be the red TGV Thalys which would blast us to Brussels and Amsterdam. (We'd be taking the slower DB - Deutsches Bundesbahn - from Amsterdam to Münster.

Sister-in-law Pamela decided that she had the vacation time and desire to come with us. With a general feeling about how I'd like the trip to unfold I took to the 'net to juggle plane and train schedules. While it may be unimpressive to readers a few years from now, the 'net is still in its infancy (especially outside of the USA) and it was a coup finding hotels in the middle of interesting neighborhoods in Amsterdam and Paris.

I chose and booked each leg of our train journey; the airplane portion was trivial in comparison.

We took advantage of Virgin Atlantic's non-stop between San Francisco and London; it's a long flight but avoiding the hassles associated with layovers make it a greater pleasure and worth the challenge. (You haven't travelled until you take a small child in a plane for ten hours.)

At home we packed, then winnowed what we didn't absolutely need, and repeated a few times. With this many stops I didn't want to be carrying all that much nor unpacking and repacking things I didn't absolutely need. I did take a Dorling Kindersly travel guide for most every one of our destination countries; that was heavy.

Our plan was to arrive in London and almost immediately take the Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel - the Chunnel - to Paris. A week or so later we'd take the high-speed Thalys to Brussels (one day) and to Amsterdam (another week). Then DB into Germany (yet another week).

Rather than write - as I usually do - about the air travel and making our way from Heathrow Airport to our B&B in London, and then from the B&B to Waterloo Station, let's just jump on the Eurostar on our way to Paris.