Hello,
Will be visiting Europe for the first time this year and already feeling overwhelmed by planning and options.
I'll be spending the month of September in the UK and have my train pass for that figured out. However, from London, to Brussels, possibly a stop in Bruges, to Cologne and on to Amsterdam to finish my trip, I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what kind of train pass to get or does it make more sense to go point to point from London on?
Thanks,
Rick
If you are prepared to buy no-refund, no-exchange tickets well in advance (up to 120 days), you can save considerably on point-to-point.
The lowest price for London-Belgium is £45 ($68). There are not many offered at that price and they go pretty quickly. Use the official Eurostar website - eurostar.com.
Use the official German train website bahn.de for the trains to/from Cologne (Köln). You must spell the cities in German (there's autofill, not to worry) and Hbf is "central train station." When you choose language, the site seems to work better in UK English than US English. There are reduced fares as low as €19, though most are €29 or more.
I've never used a pass. The advice I've seen here over the years is that they are not usually going to save you money and you may have to pay extra for reservations.
If you want to make last-minute decisions on trains, then the pass may save you money, since you may have to pay full fare.
Don't worry about booking in advance from Brussels to Bruges: Belgian railways do not give an advance booking discount for domestic trains.
On Eurostar, if you don't want to stay in Brussels, you choose the "any Belgian station" option and buy your reserved ticket from London to Brussels. Once you get to Brussels, you simply use the same ticket and catch any local train to any onward destination. There are probably time limits - I went straight to Ghent so I didn't read the fine print.
If you are staying at least one night in Brussels, then, as Philip pointed out, there are many trains all day long . . . and pretty inexpensive.
Don't bother with a pass, for multiple reasons that I won't get into (I'll let someone else explain). For Brussels to Cologne, you have two fast options and both of them are best booked in advanced to save money.
Thalys operates nearly hourly trains between Cologne and Brussels. Less expensive, but not as frequent, Deutsche Bahn aslo runs a fast ICE train between Brussels and Frankfurt that stops in Cologne. Your third option is just to take a Belgian train to Aachen and a Regiobahn (slower than the ICE) to Cologne. You wouldn't save anything by buying in advanced for this one.
For Cologne to Amsterdam, Deutche Bahn also has regular ICE service between the two cities.
And as the others said... yes, just buy your ticket to Brugge at the station the day you travel.
"You must spell the cities in German"
Bahn.de/bahn.com does recognize English names for most places- Brussels, Cologne, Bruges, Munich, etc.
Awesome! Thanks everyone!
Wait...It makes more sense for me to go from London to Bruges first, right? Then to Brussels, Cologne and then on to Amsterdam. That way I'm not going to Brussels, backtracking to Bruges and then passing through Brussels again on my way to Cologne. Right? But I don't think Eurostar stops in Bruges.
The Eurostar doesn't go through Bruges, you're right. It goes through the French city of Lille before ending in Brussels. There are frequent trains from Brussels to Bruges; it takes about an hour. Many people do day trips between Brussels and Bruges-- "backtracking" is no big deal at all.
You will take the Eurostar into Brussels and then take a local train for nearly an hour from Brussels to Brugge (Bruges). You would take a local train back to Brussels and change to either a Thalys or ICE onwards to Cologne, unless you get one of the rare trains which run through from Bruges to Cologne. I did that several years ago but don't know if that train still exists.
Connections in Brussel Zuid are very easy.
