In 2025, my son wants to travel from Paris to Amsterdam.
His options seem to be bullet train or bus.
Both have advantages (speed vs. expense) and disadvantages (expense vs. time spent travelling).
Is there an in between option? A slow train? That might show more of the countryside en route?
No the route is not scenic, he could get off in Brussels or Antwerp to have look around and you would buy a ticket from either of those towns the rest of the way to Amsterdam. Just either pay to take the train if the price is in your budget or the bus. To get the least expensive train fare look 120 days in advance. https://www.eurostar.com/us-en/train/paris-to-amsterdam
There are flights, about 1.5 hours in the air nonstop, plus airport time and hassles. Google Flights is showing fares around $200 in early May, could be less in 2025 if he gets the ticket early enough. To me flying would be the worst of both worlds, too much time overall, no scenery at all, too expensive. Air France/KLM does it, so does EasyJet (via Copenhagen, takes much longer but costs a little less). If I were your son, I'd take the Eurostar (formerly Thalys). The website shows fares "from $41," which is hard to beat.
FlixBus has 18 direct buses per 24hr Day/Night between Paris and Amsterdam. Trip takes 6hrs 20mins with one stop between the 2 cities. Tickets run from $19.99 to $31.99. Book in advance or avoid weekends & holidays. There are other Bus Lines available.
Of course there is always the option of non-premium trains. I don't like to call them "slow", because if you (quite reasonably) demand good travel services, you need many places to get on and off, and choices of speed and seating. For a young person's first trip to Europe, this board's usual warnings about excessive hotel changes apply less. If he has the slightest interest in a city where he has to change trains, he could book a cheap hotel in the general area of the train station for 22 hours in that city.
Once you learn the levels of train service, and the likely "change" locations, you can use either the SNCF or the DB (yes, many people here like the German site so much they use it exclusively. I always use the country I'm starting in, however.) to list legions of choices and see how long they take. Then you click on a link like "Details" and it shows you all the stops and changes.
It's only an introduction, but our host has some free travel tips. He could also go to the library and look at any of Rick's guidbooks to get an idea of train travel basics.
https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips
EDIT: I haven't checked this specific route, but many premium trains are sold like air tickets; That is, in exchange for non-changeable, non-refundable tickets bought at least six weeks in advance, quite reasonable prices can be available. Also, departure times less used by business travelers can cost less.
Thanks all for your thoughts/advice.
Yes, there is a slow train which takes about the same time as the bus.
Change at Mauberge (France), Charleroi and Brussels. 4 x a day, the connections are orchestrated to work
What is the purpose of the journey? If it's just to get to Amsterdam the easiest way possible, you can't beat the direct high speed train. Unless you want to do it on a budget or on short notice, in which case the bus and regional trains has advantages.
Also during the Olympics in 2024 there are to be Brussels to Paris slow trains on the direct route, to supplement Eurostar.
A couple of companies have expressed an interest in making them permanent, so who knows what may happen next year.
Running a high speed train is actually cheaper than running a slow conventional train. That Eurostar is so expensive is because they have a monopoly and can thus get away with doing things the inefficient SNCF way. There are other companies indeed interested in competing with them. They would want to compete on the high speed route however.
Currently France is doing everything it can short of actually leaving the EU[1] in order to protect the privileges of the SNCF staff. So we will see.
[1] EU rules dictate that countries have to open their networks to competition. France has a long tradition however of ignoring EU rules that it finds inconvenient.
We just took the Eurostar from Paris to Amsterdam. The "cheap" seats were plenty comfortable. We were right next to the bar car and it was quite lively (they ran out of beer). We left mid-afternoon and got to Amsterdam in time for dinner. Grab a sandwich or snack in the train station to eat on the ride, and make sure you are on the right platform. It's a very long train and we barely made it after going to the platform for the previous train. We paid $60 euro/ticket in advance.
