With flight disruptions still causing headaches and air fares creeping up, more people are considering the train as a good option, rather than just a greener one.
To be fair, once you factor in getting to the airport, waiting around, and then travelling from the airport into a city centre at the other end, the train often wins on time too. You can also cut your carbon footprint by up to 90% compared to flying, which doesn’t hurt. A survey of over 1,000 travellers ranked their favourite European cities reachable by rail, and the results are surprising but also really exciting. Paris came in mid-table, which tells you something about how good some of the less obvious options are.
Bruges came top, and it’s not hard to see why.
It scored 85% overall and beat Paris, Amsterdam, and pretty much everyone else. It’s three and a half hours from London, and once you’re there, you can walk almost everywhere. The canals, the cobbled streets, and the chocolate shops all feel genuinely lovely rather than like somewhere performing its own charm for tourists. People used words like “magical” and “enchanting”, and while those sound like postcard language, they’re not wrong.
The Belfry climb is worth doing if your knees are up to 366 spiral steps because the views across the rooftops are brilliant. The Groeningemuseum is quieter than you’d expect for somewhere covering six centuries of Belgian art, and you can get a beer for change from a five euro note, which is an increasingly rare thing in a European city. Catch a Eurostar sale, and you can get to Brussels for around £70 return, with the Bruges leg costing just €12 on top.
Bordeaux is the one for food and drink.
It picked up five stars for food and drink in the survey. The wine connection is obvious; you can do vineyard tours in the surrounding regions or visit the Cité du Vin museum if you want to spend a few hours learning about 2,000 years of winemaking without leaving the city. However, it’s not just wine. Travellers specifically mentioned the restaurants catering to all budgets, and the food itself, such as local beef and oysters from nearby Cap Ferret, is truly worth travelling for.
The city itself is beautiful too. It’s got rand neoclassical squares, a Gothic cathedral with a freestanding bell tower, boutiques, and cafés that don’t feel like they’ve been designed entirely around visitors. It’s a six-hour train journey from London, which is the longest on this list, but for a long weekend, it’s worth every minute of it.
Amsterdam is brilliant, but it does get crowded.
It scored 82% and got five stars for cultural sights, which is fair. The Rijksmuseum, Anne Frank House, Rembrandt House and the Royal Palace are all within walking distance of the train station, which makes the first day almost effortlessly good. The canals are beautiful, and the whole city is easy to get around on foot or by bike.
It only got one star for lack of crowds, though, which is the honest part of this. Amsterdam is extremely popular and it shows. If you go in peak summer, you’ll feel it. That said, it’s a direct four-hour train from London and the station drops you right into the centre, so at least getting there and back is painless.
Avignon is a bit of a hidden gem.
It tied with Amsterdam on 82% and also got five stars for cultural sights. Most people visiting the south of France head straight for Nice or Marseille, which means Avignon stays a bit quieter and more enjoyable to walk around. The Popes’ Palace is the headline attraction—it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site marking the period when Avignon was temporarily the centre of the Catholic world. The scale of it is impressive, and the religious frescos inside by Matteo Giovannetti are worth seeing.
Three miles of medieval stone walls still circle the city, which adds to the feeling that you’re somewhere with real history rather than just a place that happens to have old buildings in it. It’s a six-hour journey from London and scored four stars for value for money, which suggests it won’t cost a fortune once you’re there.
Rotterdam is an incredible city that doesn’t get nearly enough attention.
It finished fifth with 81%, and it’s only three and a half hours from London. The city was almost completely destroyed in World War II bombing, and instead of trying to rebuild what was lost, it went in a totally different direction architecturally. The result is striking. The Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen museum is clad in mirrors. The Erasmus Bridge has a distinctive bow shape that earned it the nickname “the Swan”. Piet Blom’s cube houses, bright yellow and tilted at angles, have become an emblem of the city.
It’s not a conventional city break in the way that Bruges or Amsterdam are, and that’s kind of the point. If you’ve done the usual European capitals and want something a bit different, Rotterdam delivers it without making you work very hard to find it.
Ghent is worth adding to the list too.
It scored 80% and four stars for both food and drink and cultural sights. It’s a short train hop from Brussels after the Eurostar, and it tends to be noticeably quieter than Bruges despite being equally attractive. Medieval guildhalls, a 14th-century castle, waterways lined with old town houses—it has everything that makes Belgian cities so appealing, with a bit more breathing room. Four stars for value for money as well, which always helps.
Paris is still great, just not the best value.
It finished seventh with 79% and got five stars for cultural sights, which is obviously deserved. The 2 hours, 16 minute journey from London is the fastest on this list and makes it the easiest city to reach for a short trip. The problem is that it only got one star for lack of crowds and two for value for money, which reflects how expensive and busy it’s become. That doesn’t mean don’t go; it just means you might want to consider some of the alternatives first, especially if crowds or budget matter to you. A lot of people get off the Eurostar in Brussels and forget to keep going, which is a shame because Belgium alone has two cities on this list that rated higher.
