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A low-cost trip to Venice
By | November 9, 2007
A low-cost trip to Venice
by John Valentine
Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about the beauty of Venice, a wonder of the world, this jewel is just an overnight train ride away from London – since our visit last in October we have met people who have been on holiday to Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Madagascar, Brazil – but not to Venice.
I guess they must actually enjoy sitting in those flying aluminium tubes…. Rail is the way to arrive. Out of the train, across the concourse (stopping at the Information kiosk to buy your 1, 2 or 3 day vaporetto or water bus passes) and the Grand Canal is right in front of you. Stand at the station entrance and take in the view of this busy commercial waterway for a moment before making for the No 1 vaporetto stop. This is the slow bus, stopping at every stop on the way down the canal - it takes about 25 minutes to get to the southern end and is a super introduction to the city. Every building a palace, on both banks, all the way to St Marks Square.
Earlier blogs, on Berlin and Rome, haven’t discussed costs in great detail – the Rome trip in particular was a bit of a treat, and we went first class. This time, we wanted to find out the actual lowest cost for a sleeper trip to Venice. The answer is – it’s pretty cheap: Paris – Venice was 35 euros per person, the return was 55 euros. So maybe £55 or £60 both ways – and the return leg would have been 35 euros as well except that we travelled Saturday to Sunday, which is more expensive. (Some London-bound Eurostars are also more expensive on Sundays, so travel mid-week if you can). Those prices depend on booking as near as possible to 90 days before your (return) journey, on the SNCF website, and they buy you a place in a 6-berth couchette compartment. If you are travelling four together – or even two – you may be lucky and have the compartment to yourselves. We weren’t, and on the way out we four Brits shared with a young honeymooning French couple who were also a tad disappointed not to get the compartment to themselves, and who decided to go to bed as soon as the train left Gare du Bercy at 8.30pm. Not a barrel of laughs, so we made up our beds (you do that yourself in couchette class) and decamped to the dining car for a very mediocre meal (as on the way to Rome) but rather better wine – and rejoined our travelling companions at about 11pm.
We all slept ok, and arrived at 8.30 – no free breakfast – and made for the vaporetto stop and our hotel, to dump our bags and spend the day on the lagoon islands. Where we came across the relic of a Venetian anti-flying campaign in the photograph. 
On the way back we were unlucky again, but our companions this time were friendly and chatty, and we all stayed up until the train stopped in Milan at about 11.30, see the photo – and then we weren’t conscious of anything much until daylight and the Paris suburbs filtered through the blinds.Then a metro trip to Gare du Nord (described in the Rome blog) to catch a Eurostar back to London Waterloo for the last time – the next one we take will arrive in St Pancras, hopefully without that awful south London crawl along suburban commuter lines.
The Eurostar fare has to be added to the Paris-Venice costs, and unless you are luck with a special offer, that will be £59 – possibly more for Sunday travel. So a 2½ hour trip to Paris costs less than a 12-hour sleeper trip from Paris to Venice. Very odd.
Topics: Alternatives to Air Travel, European Destinations, Holiday by Train, John Valentine, Rail Travel, Stop Flying Stories, Your Experiences |