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CUNARD’S QUEEN MARY 2
ONE WAY TICKET $2508.96USD
TRANSATLANTIC CROSSING DEPARTS SOUTHAMPTON EVERY TWO WEEKS, APRIL-OCTOBER
ARRIVES NEW YORK SIX DAYS LATER
OR, IN OUR SINGULAR CASE AND DESPITE OUR BEST WISHES, ARRIVES FORT LAUDERDALE SEVEN DAYS LATER
cunard.com
The train leaves from Victoria Station. The train ticket costs more than our first-class overnight journey from Shanghai to Beijing.
We sit across from each other with a small fold-down table between us and a large, clean window to our right. Trees go by and we eat bread with cheese. Disembarking at Southhampton, we watch the other passengers board shuttle buses or climb in cars. We start to walk.
Guided by an overly optimistic hand-drawn map we walk down Western Esplanade to West Quay Road as it slopes towards the water. We still have five pounds and we are determined to spend it. In a supermarket we debate away our precious travel minutes in the beer aisle, finally buying a six pack of Wells Bombardier because the package says “£5” in white in a big red circle.
Where the public road and private dock meet there is a small security hut monitored by a man in a navy blue jacket. We arrive sweating under over-full backpacks and clutching white plastic bags of beer. We have been wearing the same clothes for so long that the dye has etched itself into our skin. The security man asks to see our tickets. We dig through our packs past worn and stinking clothes for the embossed leather -bound folders holding our tickets. We are waved on.
Twenty minutes of walking later we reach a garage filled with cars and British flags, the foyer to the soft-lit wall to wall carpeted terminal where we stand on several lines and present our papers to deferential people who give us plastic identification cards that will open the door to our room and track our spending. Then we pass through a series of tubes to a series of escalators. We are on the boat.
As the boat launches passengers stand on the deck and make the traditional champagne toast. At least according to the photographs displayed for sale along the corridor between the dining area and the main staircase. As the ship launches we are taking showers and changing our clothes for the first time in four days.
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ONE WAY TICKET 50.60GBP (APPROX $101.76USD)
DEPARTS LONDON EVERY HOUR OR SO
ARRIVES SOUTHAMPTON AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER
ojp.nationalrail.co.uk
Eurostar tickets go on sale eight months before the date of departure. I book our tickets as soon as they go on sale. I get an email confirmation and put the whole thing out of my mind for about eight months.
It is the day before our departure. I do not know which station our train leaves from. The Pompideau Center has free if tenuous wifi outside. Ten minutes are spent sitting, trying, and waiting in multiple locations before I have copied down the confirmation code, departure time and departure station. I will need all of these things.
The metro is fast, clean and efficient. We reach Gare du Nord in less than half an hour. Check-in is like that at an airport. There are four automated check-in machines outside the Eurostar terminal. Give them five minutes and the credit card you bought the ticket with and there, simply, is your ticket. There are four automated check-in machines outside the Eurostar terminal at Gare du Nord and they are all broken. We stand in line to give our reservation code and credit card to a lady behind a counter.
We fill in our customs cards and we are ready to go. A bank of entry gates requires a ticket slid into a tray before the green light goes on, the ticket is returned and the kidney-level doors give way for you. I have such faith in systems that I am through the gate, my ticket in my hand, before I realize that the light has never turned green. The doors have never given way. I have muscled my way through. Mister Chen is on the other side of the gates with a ticket that does not work. The lady in charge takes him over to the manned station. I try to go back through the gates to get my ticket properly validated. I am waved on.
The duty-free shops in the terminal sell cheap cigarettes and extremely expensive sandwiches. Twenty minutes before the train leaves they announce it on track three, and a polite line forms to the doorway and down an escalator as it flattens into a mechanical incline and then to a motorized walkway. Our car is empty. The tray tables are large and sturdy. There are two levels of overhead baggage compartments. The conductor makes all announcements in French and then in English. Twenty minutes in the darkness of the chunnel and then the conductor is making all announcements in English and then in French. At Waterloo a stout friendly lady in a clean navy blue sweater and white collared shirt asks us why we are visiting and for how long. Tourism and two days are the right answers. We are through.
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PARIS METRO
ONE WAY TICKET 1.40EU (ABOUT 2USD)
EUROSTAR TRAIN 9019
ONE WAY TICKET 178USD
DEPARTS PARIS FREQUENTLY
ARRIVES LONDON ABOUT TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER
We bought the tickets online a month ahead of time. That’s what they say to do for the Rome-Paris sleeper train. We got to the station an hour ahead of time. That gave us forty minutes to stare at the display at the Roma Termini station. Track 7! We push our selves and bags over to the track and get in the car. In each compartment a bench of three seats sits across from a bench of three seats. Two levels of beds are above on either side, the middle one folded up to allow seating. Our tickets are for the two bench seats in the middle, corresponding to the two middle beds. The window seats are the beds on the very top and the corridor seat is the bench we will sit on.
We are in the middle seats facing each other when an Italian couple sits in the window seats. The train starts moving. The steward, speaking French and English, comes by to collect our tickets and passports. Another man comes by and hands everyone non-sparkling mineral water and a cup. We eat our cold, last-minute supermarket sandwiches. The Italian couple looks about our age. They are wearing leather jackets, They look like they have jobs.
Their sandwiches look so much better.
The train is half-full into Firenze, and then everyone else gets on. A quiet man takes one of our corridor seats. The train leaves Firenze. It’s 8:53. The Italian couple begins to prepare their beds. The quiet man leaves.
The quiet man is wise to leave. The top bunks lie flat horizontally and the blankets and pillows are stored on top of them. To take your place on the top bunk you must find an empty place to store the extra blankets and pillows. Then anyone sitting must rise so you can access the ladder that sits under the bench seat. The ladder hooks into the top bunk. It does not hook in readily, but eventually. Mister Chen drags down his middle bunk through a complicated series of levers. And I open my bed, and the quiet man comes back. We would have been fine sleeping in our seats.
The transformation of beds back to seats never takes place. Mister Chen remains sleeping until we pull into Paris Bercy. The steward returns with our passports and tickets. We get off the train. We have no idea where we are.
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TRAIN 226 TO PARIS
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS $386USD
DEPARTS ROME 6:40PM
ARRIVES PARIS NEXT DAY 9:10AM
artesia.eu
We ask the lady at the ferry’s information desk if the passenger terminal is near the train station. She calls in another lady who speaks enough English to tell us that they don’t know where the train station is. The lady who speaks English tells us to ask the lady who works at the duty free shop. The lady who works at the duty free shop is pretty sure the train station is pretty near the passenger terminal. But she’s not sure. It’s a Croatian ferry, she explains. And Ancona is an Italian city.
The ferry’s passenger terminal is a parking lot next to the water. A series of signs eventually leads to an actual building housing customs and an information office. The information office opens at 9am. The ferry arrives at 7am.
We walk. If you walk down the shore and keep the water to your right and you will soon reach a train station. It is the wrong train station. The Ancona maritime station sees very few trains. We walk away from the water to a building that sort of looks like a train station. It is not. But it is next to a sign that points to the train station. With a trust born of having very few other options we follow this sign along the train tracks in a convoluted path onward and inland for about twenty minutes. And then, slowly, past the bus station, it rises – the train station.
The next train for Rome leaves at 1:53pm. It’s a little before 9am. We buy tickets. We go to the waiting room and fall asleep for twenty minutes until the police officers ask to see our tickets. The luggage lockers at the station do not inspire confidence. We wander around Ancona with our backpacks, we sit in the sun where we find it. We are glad to board the train a little after 1:20pm. Newspapers lie on the seats.
The route is mountainous, picturesque. The man taking our ticket tells us we should have had them stamped in Ancona before boarding the train, but there are no consequences. We arrive in Rome hungry and on time.
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R 2327 TO ROME
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS EUR13.22 (APPROX $19.33)
DEPARTS ANCONA DAILY 1:53PM
ARRIVES ROME 5:48PM
Both companies running international ferries to Italy have the same prices listed in euros in their brochures. We go to the Jadrolinja office. One lady stands at the information desk. We ask about the differences between the grades of seating and the prices of the tickets, and then we ask here where to buy tickets. “Window Four,” she says. We walked left past a pillar to Window Four. It is empty. The lady from the information desk walks over to stand behind it. She looks as ashamed about the whole thing as we do. And then she sells us two reclining seat tickets abourd the Dubrovnik for the next day.
The Dubrovnik leaves at 9pm. We are told to report with our tickets between 7pm and 8pm. We show up at 7:12. It’s a short but argumentative line. Up at Window Five, our lady from Windows Four and the Information Desk gives us customs forms and directs us to the door in the back and to the left. A lady in an Italian uniform looks at our passports and lets us by. We join the monks standing on a corner outside the ferry terminal, waiting in the new dark for the Blue Line boat.
Eventually Officials arrive to take our tickets and lead us past the traffic streaming to the ferry’s lower automobile hosting decks. We climb up to the lobby, where a disinterested lady sells customs-free liquor and cigarettes and no one can tell us where in Ancona we will be landing or where the train station there.
The signs direct us to our reclining seats in a large open room divided into a front and a back by a glass partition. Each section is thirteen chairs across and about eight rows deep. Each section has three television sets at the front. We are the first people in the room. By the time the boat leaves there are three other people in front and three or four people in the back. By the time the boat leaves we are completely engrossed in a Bruce Willis movie that we have missed the beginning of. It is about an autistic boy who breaks a government code and the secret government agents that are out to get him and only Bruce Willis can stop them.
And the alarm goes off in piercing, rattling groups of three. Bruce Willis confronts the corrupt government official in his home at a party. Then the television goes off and we are informed of safety procedures first in Croatian, then Italian, then English. By the time the movie resumes the battle is over and Bruce Willis is visiting the autistic school in this new orphan’s new home.
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JADROLINIJA’S DUBROVNIK
ONE WAY TICKET RESERVED RECLINING SEAT 315HRK (ABOUT $54.50USD)
DEPARTS SPLIT TUESDAY, THURSDAY AND SUNDAY 9:00PM (LOW SEASON)
ARRIVES ANCONA NEXT DAY 7:00AM
We buy tickets at Budapest’s Keleti Paliudvar, following signs past the plywood fences and semi-transparent tarps of renovation to the international ticket office. The high ceilings are framed in dark wood with peaked windows open to the outdoors. Twelve ticket windows sit beneath. Two are open. It is freezing. Between the dark wood tables with thick marble tops the lines are long, filled with Americans, and moving slower than the line at the Greenpoint post office. A third window opens and a line forms quickly behind it. The window at the front of our line closes. The defeated crowd shuffles to the rear of the other two lines.
At the window we ask for tickets to Split. The man behind the counter speaks English and looks several things up in very large books. He sells us tickets from Budapest to Zagreb, with a transfer at Zagreb to Split. Good any day within the next thirty days, the guy behind the counter says.
The only international train at Keleti Paliudvar at 8:25am is on track nine. Its second class cars are interrupted only by one dining car and one first class car. A corridor runs through the left side of the second class cars, and on its right repeating units of one three seat bench facing another with a window on the side are enclosed by glass. The seats have numbers above them and some people come aboard scrutinizing these numbers, looking for specific seats. We do not have reserved seats. We keep our bags close by.
The train pulls out of the station right on time. An official comes by. He comes by to tell us that the dining car is open and serving breakfast. Three hours later the conductor comes by for our tickets. The train is not full. We have our own glass compartment. We close the door and play with the radio and light buttons above the door. None of them work.
The train to Split is a sad train when it comes, two whole cars gliding into the Zagreb station like lost sausage links. And the conductor will not let us on. We have tickets, the conductor agrees, but we need a reservation. He tells us to go to the information desk. We run to the information desk. The lady at the information desk tells us we ought to be at the ticket window.
Luckily it’s not a large station.
The line is short and the reservation process is quick and we are on the sausage train with time to spare. You can smell the plastic newness of the train car. The seats are covered in blue cloth and the tray tables fold down like large blonde wood lozenges. At the front of the car a red LED display spells out our destination. Split. The train starts to move, and it feels like the Long Island Rail Road. Then the digital display stops working.
Just like the Long Island Rail Road.
The train swoops and turns up into the mountains so that it feels like we are flying close to the ground, but the light fades too early and for most of the journey only the distant city lights bob toward and away from us. The Split train station is across from the ferry terminal.
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EC52
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS 16362 Ft (ABOUT $79.48USD)
DEPARTS BUDAPEST’S KELETI STATION DAILY 8:25AM
ARRIVES ZAGREB 2:18PM (SCHEDULED) 2:40PM (ACTUAL)
RESERVED SEAT, ZAGREB TO SPLIT
ONE WAY SECOND CLASS 36HRK (ABOUT $6.23USD)
DEPARTS ZAGREB DAILY 3:22PM
ARRIVES SPLIT 8:47PM
We walk into the ticket office in Krakow. We wait in the wrong line. The lady behind the counter kindly points us across the room to the windows that say “International.” We walk across the room. We stand in line behind two American girls who are talking about their culture shock. We hate them.
We ask for tickets to Budapest. We tell the nice lady where we want to go. We are offered second class travel or the sleeper car. We can pay with a credit card. And we are done.
It’s an hour before our train is scheduled to depart and we are at Krakow’s tiny train station. The waiting room is a picturesque mix of ancient, wood-slatted benches and the pigeons who are crapping all over them. So we walk across the cobblestone square to the mall, browse through the H&M and buy marzipan from a vending machine. By the time we return our arrival track has been announced and we walk over to merge, with uncomfortable seemlessness, with the squadron of backpackers waiting on the platform. Four enormously drunk men in matching shirts and scarves walk by, and then down the platform, and then they walk by again. As they walk they sing a soccer anthem, then stop singing to do push-ups, and then begin singing again. The train pulls in with one Krakow-Budapest sleeper car. We get on it with half the backpackers. The other backpackers and the soccer fans head for the second class cars. I am glad we paid for the sleeper.
And the sleeper is classy. Three bunks are stacked along one wall. On the other wall, below the shaving mirror, the table folds up to reveal a sink. Standing in the narrow walkway between the beds and the concept of furniture it is hard to imagine three people occupying this space at once. But our compartment and every compartment we peer into has only two occupants. Inside the mirrored cabinet above the sink-table are two bottles of water, two plastic-bagged croissants filled with chocolate pudding and packets with wet-naps and soap. It is a relaxing ride. We spend the morning waking up and asking ourselves if we have missed Budapest entirely.
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TRAIN TO BUDAPEST
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS SLEEPER 306PLN (ABOUT $100.96 USD)
DEPARTS KRAKOW GLOWNY DAILY 10:36PM
ARRIVES BUDAPEST-KELETI NEXT DAY 9:32PM
SUGGESTED ACTIVITY: Croissants with pudding inside!