Low-cost midlife crisis

The second night in a row with no actual bed. I suspect this is only doable (at this age anyway) with the knowledge that once we get to our destination I can go to bed. We don’t have to wander around an unknown city for 7 or 8 hours before we can check in somewhere.…

Reservations You need some reservations. Certain routes you cannot do without them (eg to Stockholm, or through the tunnel to the UK). Other routes you can usually find alternatives to reservation-only trains, but those alternatives usually mean lots of changes and often very full trains (which you might end up with no seat on). So…

We woke up in Austria and I was happy to note that we hadn’t missed all the scenery. We were unexpectedly met at Vienna station by our friends Elvira and Feri, and had a delicious breakfast (at a place called Das Columbus, marking the fact that 15 hours previously, we’d been in Genoa) before boarding…

We were all Sori to say goodbye to our Italian getaway, but the tickets will expire soon and some of us need to get back to work. So, reluctantly we walked up to Sori station, and got on the first train of a long and slightly foolish trek across the continent that we expect to…

I needed to go to Genova to take care of some train reservation business (the interrail app is seriously rubbish for reservations. It is, as I’m sure the kids say, a crapp. I will put together a list of all the things that people wanting to do interrail should be aware of. But not today).…

In the deli. Pick up a jar of pesto. “No, don’t buy that, go across the road to that shop, they produce their own. It’s the best around” (in Genoa, pesto is taken very seriously). I’d forgotten how regional food is in Italy and how important it is. Obviously pesto is a Genovese thing but…

Where we’re staying is not very far from Cinque Terre, this stretch of coastline that people rave about like it is paradise. Five picture perfect villages surrounded by a national park and UNESCO heritage site of incredibly steep hills terraced over the centuries with dry stone walls so that vines and olives can be grown…

The only fixed pre-planned part of this trip was a booking at an apartment in the small village of Sori (which is technically within the boundaries of greater Genoa). As a result, today’s train rides involved the 2-hour trip from the epic Milano Centrale station to Genova Piazza Principe, and then three very short hops…

We made reservations for the train across the Alps. It was possible to do the journey bit by bit, but in the end the idea of having guaranteed seats all the way to Milan (or as rendered in German, Mailand – I’m not sure if German speakers have some kind of wordplay to help them…

Lille was great as before. Like the anti-Calais. In the morning we set off through cycling country (or at least a part of the world I only know from the names of bike races). Through Roubaix and on to Kortrijk (confusingly rendered as Courtoi by the app). Change there for the Brussels train, where we…