Trains

Before our trip, we debated whether or not to get a Eurail pass, but in the end we decided to get one and it was an excellent decision.  On the trains we were able to research the next city we were traveling to, sleep (which Shawna did on just about every train), take in the views, reflect on our experiences, and play Carcassonne with picnic lunches.

We had great experiences on almost all of our inter-country trains.  I thought at the beginning of our trip it would be fun to rank each of the metro train systems in cities that have a metro, but I got lazy.  I think I could sum up our sentiments though by saying that Lausanne's metro was super-fast, Berlin's trains were expansive and well organized, Rome's stations were surprisingly upscale, London's Underground was awesome all around, and Paris' metro smelled like pee and poo.

Here is our very well worn Eurail Pass.  This thing has been through a long journey in my money belt.  Our Eurail pass allowed us to travel 15 different days within a 2 month period and also entitled us to first class accomodations on all the trains that had first class cars.

We took this colorfully decorated train into Slovenia.  I think some countries just let people graffiti their trains to spice up the ride a little bit.

Shawna lounging in the retro-feeling Slovenian rail car.

This was our second (and much improved) sleeper car that we took.  It carried us comfortably from Krakow to Prague.  There was even a personal sink under the desk in the corner.  Our only regret was that it arrived too soon, interrupting our sleep.

This little cup was made available to us in the sleeper car.  I'm not quite sure what the top of it means when it says "for your morning toilet", but we just used it to brush our teeth.

This was our meal on our train out of Paris.  Being France, we thought that the train food might be really good, but this was actually the most disgusting meal of our entire trip.  The chicken was freezing cold, the biscuit was rock hard, and I don't even want to know what that stuff in the lower left corner is.  The only thing worth consuming was the wine and brownie.

Nice view out the back of our panorama train in Switzerland

It was a bittersweet moment when we took our final train ride.  It's a fine way to travel around and makes me wish that Amtrak was more expansive and more affordable.