When I saw the words “sleep tourism” (le tourisme du sommeil) in our newspaper, I thought that they were talking about “slow travel”. That’s something that Bill and I have embraced since moving to France, now that we no longer need to fly over here from the US, dash around seeing everything we can in 2 weeks, and then immediately fly back. Taking the train over long distances gives us a chance to enjoy the journey, the scenery, the food and wine, the legroom, and arrive downtown within walking distance of our hotel. In fact, since “sleep” was in the title I figured they were talking about overnight trains that are making a real comeback in Europe, giving you a comfortable bed allowing you to wake up in your destination city. We have already covered that topic and the book you see here in this paragraph in previous blog posts. But this new style of travel was something totally different.

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When we first visited the capital of Portugal a few years ago, we were staying about a 40-minute walk from the waterfront, so we made extensive use of the city’s public transit system. Going downhill was easy enough; however, for getting back up to the equivalent height of a 16-story building, the Metro (subway) was a welcome relief. This time our apartment was closer to the sea so we were able to see much more on foot, with plenty of time to stop along the way to admire the views, the shop windows, and even stop for a coffee or a beer. Thanks to a Rick Steves guidebook we had our own do-it-yourself walking tour of the neighborhoods, complete with maps.

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There’s been a lot in the news recently about train travel in Europe for this new year. Headlines have included, “Faster trains and cheaper tickets; 5 New European Train Routes; and, Europe’s night trains are making a comeback,” all aiming to show the benefits of new routes, lower costs, faster speeds, and lower emissions. We’ll see the beginning of sleeper services from Paris to Berlin plus Amsterdam to Prague with a direct service from there on to Budapest. Bordeaux will be linked directly to London with no changes required as will Barcelona to Geneva. While lower priced tickets will be good, “free” is even better and that was the topic of an article about travel in Luxembourg.

Continue reading “Free for all”