My wife and I would like to take night trains for these stations Amsterdam to Vienna, Innsbruck to Venice, Pisa or Florence to Interlaken what are our options for night trains and where to book those night train tickets? I have been looking at http://www.eurail.com but most of the trains come back with one or more train changes on the route. Also what do these abbreviations mean? AV,CIS,ES,ICP,CNL,IC,ICN,EC,EN,EXP
Posted by
Ottawa, Ontario,, Canada
521 posts
Hi Kav,
I would recommend that you take a look at the Deutsche Bahn schedule website. There are not always night trains involved between all destinations, so this should help you see what is available.
Those abbreviations indicate the different type of trains... for example, an IC is "Intercity" which means that it probably will not stop at small towns. An EN is a "EuroNight" train, which is a night train.
The Deutsche Bahn site will explain each of the abbreviations to you. Just do a train search, and then click the arrow on the left-hand side of the recommended schedule. It will give you all the details including any trains that you need to switch, and in full words what each type of train is.
Just as a quick indicator, I did a search from Amsterdam to Vienna and I chose a random date as I am not sure when you are travelling. I came up with two possibilities, one from 18:34 to 09:04, with the abbreviations of ICE, and CNL. Clicking for the extra info, I see that it would be an Inter-city express (the high-speed trains of Germany) and then a City Night Line, which is an overnight train. The ICE is to Frankfurt, where you would switch to the CNL to Vienna.
The other option is 20:31 to 11:40 with CNL and EC. In this one, you would start on the night train to Munich, and then switch to an EC (Eurocity - think of it like an IC) to Vienna.
I hope this works, if you need any more specifics, just ask!
Posted by
Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
There is a night train from Innsbruck Hbf to Venezia Santa Lucia. It departs at 23:05. CLICK HERE to see a sample current schedule. EN stands for EuroNight. It's 80Euro for a bed in a 6-person couchette.
For the night train leaving Italy and going into Switzerland, you can get a night train departing from Florence at 21:17 but you will need to get off at Spiez at 5:44 to transfer to a train going into Interlaken. Not bad. If you want a night train from Pisa, they will route you back to Florence to pick up the same night train above or a different one. If you route through Milan to Spiez, I don't see a night train.
AV is Alta Velocita (top-of-the-line Eurostar), ES is Eurostar, CIS is Cisalpino (Cheez-alpino) - a train system that mostly connects Northern Italy and Switzerland. It runs on the same tracks as the Trenitalia and Swiss trains. A "N" in any abbreviation stands for night.
Posted by
US Pacific Northwest
10344 posts
Even if you sleep relatively well on night trains (or aren't sure if you will), many travelers here recommend that one avoid doing back-to-back night trains, to avoid the exhaustion that can cancel out the advantages of night trains (because of being really tired during the day after two back-to-back night trains).
Posted by
Stafford, TX, USA
6 posts
You should also look at flying. We were going to take the night train from Zurich to Vienna, but I found a flight for $97 on Air Berlin. The flight is only 1 hr, 15 min, and we are assured a good night's sleep in a real bed.
Posted by
Kelowna, BC, Canada
15 posts
We're taking the CNL (City Night Line) from Amsterdam to Vienna. I think they only have these trains on Fridays & Saturdays...I could be wrong though!
It leaves at 5:00PM from Amsterdam and arrives in Vienna at 9:30AM the following day.
We could have flown for cheaper, but we wanted to experience a hotel on wheels.
I booked through the bahn.de website and it was really easy :)