- I took a train trip to Europe with two of my kids and it was more fun than flying.
- It allowed us to travel on a budget and spend less time on the move.
- I also knew that traveling by train would be better for me, with less stress and more time with my children.
Growing up, my train buff father often took me on train rides. I’ve always loved the ease and convenience of train travel, mixed with nostalgia for a time when train travel was the norm. When I left home, I continued to choose trains over any other form of transportation whenever I could.
After having children, it wasn’t always possible to travel by train and I became adept at navigating airports with little ones. Even with experience, it never got easier waiting in long lines to check bags, then waiting even longer – sometimes hours – to board our flights. Then we had to spend even more hours in the cramped seats, unable to get up and walk down the aisle when the kids were fussy.
Always arriving at our destination exhausted and exhausted, wishing I had taken the train instead.
I have tried traveling by train with my children
This past summer, I took a quick trip to Europe with my two youngest children. We had no choice but to fly across the Atlantic, but I was hoping to use the trains to get around once we landed. A flight buddy suggested flying between our two main destinations, London and Paris, because the flights were affordable.
I didn’t have an unlimited budget, so I started searching for flights, but dreaded looking at the fares, knowing I’d have to deal with more airports than were strictly necessary for this trip. Traveling alone in a foreign country with two small children is hard enough and anything that could make my trip easier was worth exploring.
I decided my mind was worth more than a few hundred dollars. Although the flight time was shorter than the train journey, the overall travel time for the flights would have been much longer. We would have had to arrive at the airport several hours before our flights and would have spent much longer getting to airports far from the city centers.
Getting to and from airports would have been much more expensive than taking the subway to centrally located train stations, so the cost gap wasn’t as big as it seemed. Not to mention, I probably would have spent a small fortune on snacks while we waited at the airport with nothing to do.
My stress was lower with train travel
However, the biggest factor in choosing trains over flights was my sanity and wanting to enjoy my vacation. I had limited time to explore Europe with my kids and I wanted to make the most of it. Since train travel is so much more relaxing for me, I knew I would have more energy to actually enjoy myself instead of having to decompress from the stressful experience of flying.
I knew my kids would be in a better mood too. They wouldn’t need to spend hours bored in an airport. They could rest comfortably in larger seats during the trip and get up for a quick walk whenever they needed to stretch their legs. We would all be happier and could spend more time exploring.
I’ve always thought of train travel as an experience, and this trip was no different. My children and I gazed at the beautiful French and English countryside as we moved from one destination to another. We captured sights and cities we would never have seen otherwise, and certainly not from a plane. This particular train journey had the added benefit of taking us deep under the English Channel, which added more excitement and wonder to the journey.
Choosing the train over less expensive flights was the right choice for my family and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
