Frommer's Europe by Rail [Paperback]

Suzanne Rowan Kelleher (Author), Donald Olson (Author), Darwin Porter (Author), Hana Mastrini (Author), Joseph S. Lieber (Author), George McDonald (Author), Sascha Segan (Author), Theodora Tongas (Author)

Book Description

Series: Frommer's Complete Guides | Publication Date: April 2, 2004

You’ll never fall into the tourist traps when you travel with Frommer’s. It’s like having a friend show you around, taking you to the places locals like best. Our expert authors have already gone everywhere you might go -- they’ve done the legwork for you, and they’re not afraid to tell it like it is, saving you time and money. No other series offers candid reviews of so many hotels and restaurants in all price ranges. Every Frommer’s Travel Guide is up-to-date, with exact prices for everything, dozens of color maps, and exciting coverage of shopping, and nightlife. You’d be lost without us!

Whether you’re a first-time visitor doing the grand tour or a seasoned traveler planning a multi-country itinerary, Frommer’s Europe by Rail is a must. The official guidebook of Rail Europe, this user-friendly volume has everything you’ll need to plan a successful train trip through Europe, from descriptions of the best scenic lines and high-speed rail routes to detailed information on reservations procedures and all of the rail passes available to visitors. We’ve also included a wide array of options in a variety of price ranges, from large hotels and world-renowned dining rooms to charming guesthouses and simple cafes. There’s something here for every taste, interest, and budget.

Just because we’re covering such a wide territory doesn’t mean that we’ve skimped on the details. You’ll find an astounding depth of accurate, up-to-date information, including timetables, detailed city and route maps, exact prices, open hours, metro stops, rail pass options, train station amenities, train interior photos, and more.

We’ll take you to Europe’s major cities and most charming towns, where we offer complete sightseeing, shopping, and nightlife coverage and review the best accommodations and dining for the rail traveler. But we don’t stop there. We’ve designed easy-to-follow point-to-point itineraries that help you make the most out of your time in Europe, including special itineraries that highlight Europe’s best dining, architecture, scenery, and historic castles. With Frommer’s Europe by Rail you’ll tour the medieval towns of Flanders, the chateaux of the Loire Valley, the sunny resorts of the Costa del Sol, the hill towns of Tuscany, and the spectacular scenery of the Alps.

It’s all accompanied by color maps that have been carefully keyed to the text. You’ll also find a glossary of handy rail terms, the latest trip-planning advice, money-saving tips, and a free color fold-out rail map!

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Experience a place the way the locals do. Enjoy the best it has to offer. And avoid tourist traps. At Frommer’s, we use 150 outspoken travel experts around the world to help you make the right choices. Frommer’s. Your guide to a world of travel experience.

Choose the Only Guide That Gives You:

• Extensive information on reservations procedures, scenic train routes, and discount railpasses.
• Outspoken opinions on what’s worth your time and what’s not.
• Easy-to-follow itineraries highlighting Europe’s best dining, architecture, and scenery.
• Complete sightseeing coverage, and reviews of the best accommodations and dining for the rail traveler.
• Insider information on train accommodations, high-speed trains, and passes courtesy of Rail Europe®.

About the Author

Darwin Porter, a native of North Carolina, was assigned to write the very first edition of a Frommer’s guide devoted solely to one European country. Since then, he has written many bestselling Frommer’s guides to all the major European destinations. In 1982, he was joined in his research efforts by Danforth Prince, formerly of the Paris bureau of the New York Times, who has traveled and written extensively about Europe.

Suzanne Rowan Kelleher is a freelance travel writer and the former Europe Editor of Travel Holiday magazine. She has traveled extensively in Ireland, is married to an Irishman, and currently lives in County Dublin. She is the author of Frommer’s Ireland and a co-author of Frommer’s Europe from $70 a Day.

Native New Yorker Joseph S. Lieber lived in Hungary for several years in the early 1990s. He presently practices law in Boston and is the co-author of Frommer’s Budapest & the Best of Hungary. Christina Shea served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Hungary and subsequently directed Peace Corps language-training programs in Lithuania and Kyrghyzstan. She’s the author of the novel Moira’s Crossing (St. Martin’s) and a co-author of Frommer’s Budapest & the Best of Hungary.

George McDonald has lived and worked in both Amsterdam and Brussels as deputy editor of the KLM in-flight magazine and as editor-in-chief of the Sabena in-flight magazine. Now a freelance journalist and travel writer based in Germany, he is the author of Frommer’s Amsterdam and Frommer’s Belgium, Holland & Luxembourg, and a co-author of Frommer’s Europe from $70 a Day.

Hana Mastrini is a native of the western Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary who became a veteran of the “Velvet Revolution” as a student in Prague in 1989. She began contributing to Frommer’s guides while helping her husband, John, better understand his new home in the Czech Republic.

Donald Olson is a novelist, playwright and travel writer. His play, Beardsley, was produced in London. He is the author of England For Dummies, which won the Lowell Thomas Travel Writing Award for Best Guidebook in 2002. He is also a co-author of Frommer’s Europe from $70 a Day. He has contributed travel stories to the New York Times, National Geographic Books, and many other national publications.

New-York based Sascha Segan is a freelance journalist who has lived on three continents and spent quite a lot of time riding the rails of Europe. He has worked for Expedia Travels magazine, ABCNEWS.com, and The Guardian in the U.K. He is currently a columnist at Frommers.com and is the author of Frommer’s Fly Safe, Fly Smart.

Born in Chicago, Theodora Tongas traveled around her parents’ native Greece many times as a child. After earning a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she went to work as a reporter for the Associated Press in Athens, and has lived there ever since. With Athens as her base, she has toured the entire mainland—and many islands—by plane, train, and automobile.

Product Details

• Paperback: 896 pages
• Publisher: Frommer's; 1st edition (April 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764541102
• ISBN-13: 978-0764541100
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,471,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a useful guidebook, November 30, 2004

By 

Someone (Alameda, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frommer's Europe by Rail (Paperback)

Not a safe bet, this European rail guide offers a strange mix of up-to-date and completely out-of-date information. It also tries to do too much, providing page after page of hotel, restaurant and museum listings by city but only a page of two of specific rail tips by country. The guide pushes Eurailpasses, as is to be expected from a publication endorsed by Rail Europe, the main stateside pass vendor.

Points to watch out for...

The guide is too optimistic about reservations and supplements. As the various continental railways move toward inevitable privatization, more and more premium services are being introduced. Most of the trips that tourists are likely to take will require reservations and supplements, in addition to Eurailpasses.

The guide doesn't give point-to-point tickets a fair shake, listing full prices and only the most basic discounts. For example, SNCF's "Prem's" specials (advance purchase online tickets to French and international destinations) aren't mentioned. For many tourists, these specials would make point-to-point tickets cheaper than Eurailpasses.

The guide lists only expensive, tourist-class hotels. I didn't see a single listing below 100 Euros in Paris, for example. There are many excellent, if humble, hotels throughout Europe. Use the Web to get current hotel information.

My favorite example of out-of-date information in the guide has to do with the regional express train ("RER") from Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle aiport to Paris. The guide lists both first and second-class ticket prices, even though the first-class designation disappeared years ago.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Frommer gets the substance right!, July 19, 2005

By 

Eurotraveler "Sara" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frommer's Europe by Rail (Paperback)

I found this guide very useful in plotting out where I wanted to go, how to get there, and what to visit. It was also nice to know about the student discounts at various attractions. I didn't use it for the hotel recomendations, and I used a few of the restaurant ideas, which were usually excellent choices. I traveled all over Europe (12 countries) using this book, the maps provided, and my Eurail. It was helpful in figuring out the ferry options to get from Western Europe to Scandinavia as well. I definately recomend this book to anyone traveling to Europe, as I found it very easy to use as well as useful.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Rail Guidebook, June 8, 2008

By 

Lauren - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frommer's Europe by Rail (Frommer's Complete Guides) (Paperback)

In trying to decide which book to get for traveling around Europe for a few months by rail, I looked through this book, Let's Go Europe 2008, Rick Steves Best of Europe 2008, and Europe by Eurail 2008. The latter of these was broken down into sections devoted to major cities, and day trips by train from those cities, which seemed too much like a trip organizer for me. Rick Steves didn't really include the practical point-to-point info I was looking for. Let's Go Europe was comprehensive, but the city maps just weren't that clear.

At the beginning of each chapter (one per country), there's a map of the whole country, then in each city's subsection is a map of the city center with the train station clearly marked. There's a paragraph on each city's train station information, followed by information elsewhere and how best to get around the city. This is important to me, as I wanted a book that'd help me get my bearings upon arriving in a city. Let's Go is similarly formatted, and I think Fodor's is too, but this was the only one with this format geared specifically toward rail travel that I came across. This book also includes a nice laminated tear-out rail map, but I bought a separate map with more detailed city-to-city schedule info, and am also supplementing with timetables from eurail.com.

Before buying this, I had read the review mentioning that there's some out-of-date train ticket info in this book, but I feel like that's a risk you run with any book. It's true, though, that this book alone won't give one a clear understanding of specific ticket options and prices. Europe by Eurail gave a better explanation of these; you may want to glance over it in a store, or just visit www.ricksteves.com/rail or wikitravel.org/en/Eurail.