Rail travel from London to Paris to Amsterdam

The train is the best way to travel between the cities, buy your tickets in advance at www.eurostar.com

The train is also the best option between Amsterdam and London in my opinion.

I agree with Badger. The train is the way to go to connect these cities.

On Amsterdam to London the train is not the best option, not as long as they want you to be at the station 90 minutes before departure. If you are going to have to suffer security theatre, passport controls, and endless waiting, you can as well fly. On Paris - London I would also seriously consider flying (especially from London City).

On Paris - Amsterdam it is a no brainer though. There the train wins hands down.

Thanks Badger, Kim and WengenK. Greatly appreciate the info!

As for the trip from Amsterdam to London we have a flight reserved that gets us into London in plenty of time for our flight out.

Definitely the train.
The earlier you book the cheaper the fares.
You want to be going city centre to city centre, not traveling in and out to airports.
You still have to go through Border Security anyway at an airport!
My experience with Eurostar London to Brussels return in December was seamless.
Very fast moving lines at both ends.
Not much waiting to board after that.

Thanks SJ.

Is Eurostar the only service running from London to Paris? Or are there others that are equally good?

If you are going to have to suffer security theatre, passport controls, and endless waiting, you can as well fly.

it isn't endless waiting, and it is all over when you get into the lounge. Then up the ramp, sit back in your big seat with all that legroom and relax.

the only company with passenger trains through the tunnel at this point in time is Eurostar.

There is a company which says it want to compete. Is has no crew and no trains and no schedule. Others have said that before.

Thanks Nigel

While I also don't like the security theathre involved with take the train through the Channel tunnel, it's still a better option than flying. I don't share WengenK's negative opinions.

Just remember to buy the tickets in advance, or they can get very expensive.

As for the trip from Amsterdam to London we have a flight reserved
that gets us into London in plenty of time for our flight out.

Does that time include margin for a delayed or cancelled flight? If you're self connection my suggestion would be to take the train from Amsterdam to London and spend the last night before your transatlantic flight leaves in London.

"While I also don't like the security theathre involved with take the train through the Channel tunnel, it's still a better option than flying. I don't share WengenK's negative opinions.

Just remember to buy the tickets in advance, or they can get very expensive.

As for the trip from Amsterdam to London we have a flight reserved
that gets us into London in plenty of time for our flight out.

Does that time include margin for a delayed or cancelled flight? If you're self connection my suggestion would be to take the train from Amsterdam to London and spend the last night before your transatlantic flight leaves in London."

Hi Badger. Reserving the train is one of the very, very few missteps I've had planning for this trip. I should have reserved earlier. Still the price isn't all that bad, and well within my budget. As for the Amsterdam to London flight I've allowed for 3 hours delay. I fully get that anything can happen and I might get delayed even more. But I only have so much time to work with and so if it happens I'll just have to deal. I'm not one to whine. I just start figuring out the solution. I can always post here and see what you all think, right? :-) :-)

Eurostar now wants you to be at the station 90 minutes before departure. What are you going to do all those 90 minutes? And even a moving queue is still a queue. The moment you make people queue to board a train you are a failure as a railway as far as I am concerned.

The moment you make people queue to board a train you are a failure as a railway as far as I am concerned.

It is not the fault of the railways. Both Schengen and the UK have external borders to defend. This is no different to what you do in an airport or even a seaport. Also, while it might be done a little differently, there are also hard border checks on the trains which go from the United States to Canada (done differently on the east and west coasts).

This is probably preferable to, say, the train journey from Budapest and Bucharest to Istanbul where you have to get off at the Turkish border in the small hours of the morning, with all your luggage, and line up to go through immigration. Turkey quite rightly wants to defend it's border. At many of the eastern external borders to Europe/Schengen you get interminable stops of the trains while documents re checked by border guards. Just a different way of doing it.

And I'd far rather have "security theatre" than a bomb go off mid Channel on a packed Eurostar. Those consequences are unthinkable.

The train is easier on all routes.

Since you have your tickets from Amsterdam to London, there's no reason to discuss it. Done deal.

From London to Paris, with Eurostar, yes, you have to get there early but all administrative work is done beforehand. When you arrive in Paris, you just walk off the train and go. With flying, you not only have to get to the airport two hours ahead of time, you then have to go through immigration upon arrival. And, neither airport is downtown. I'd only fly if there was a problem with Eurostar.

From Paris to Amsterdam, train is the way to go.

As for the Amsterdam to London flight I've allowed for 3 hours delay. I fully get that anything can happen and I might get delayed even more. But I only have so much time to work with and so if it happens I'll just have to deal.

Just checking if your flight back to LHR is on the same alliance as ongoing flight to USA? If not, the airline operating the flight RT to the US will not re-book you onto another flight if your return flight to LHR is delayed or cancelled & you would lose the value of the return ticket. And I'm going to assume you're only doing carry-on, if you check a bag on the first flight that's not on the same alliance, you actually have to go through Immigration, pick up your bag, exit, & re-check your bag before going back through security. If not, you are on a connecting flight, no immigration as you're just transiting, though there is security for arriving passengers. Maybe TMI, but good to know what could happen....

As for the Amsterdam to London flight I've allowed for 3 hours delay.
I fully get that anything can happen and I might get delayed even
more.

If the tickets are already bought, there might not be much to do about it. But is that 3 hours between flights or 3 hours in addition to what might be needed to change flights? I get the impression that you are self connecting and 3 hours can disappear very fast if there is a problem somewhere.

Eurostar now wants you to be at the station 90 minutes before departure. What are you going to do all those 90 minutes? And even a moving queue is still a queue. The moment you make people queue to board a train you are a failure as a railway as far as I am concerned.

You are not queuing to board the train, in fact at the top of the moving pavement there is no queue, unless somebody at the door you want is taking a moment to lift their luggage onto the train.

The queueing - and I have used Eurostar many times - is not for the train, it is the knock on of a lot of people going through security checks and both UK and French border controls. Queuing at the ticket barriers is as a result of queuing just past them at the security point,

As said above I would much rather the train not blow up under the Channel so I am glad that people are checked.

And at the destination it is a simple walk off.

What part of failure is that?

You are lucky in Switzerland to have no terrorists or border controls.

Oh wait, I think I have been through the huge long queues at the border crossing A5 - A2 Weil am Rhein, with long waits in the car. Oh, we should call that a failure and it MUST be the Germans' fault.

Maybe the Gotthard Tunnel is a failure. Must be, those long queues to use it mean it must be. Who can we blame? It must be because everybody wants to go to Italy. Yeah, that's it, let's blame the failure on the Italians.

No, I'm afraid you have dropped a clanger there. As soon as you point at something you have one finger pointing there, and three pointing back at you...