Trains and other Transport Options

Trains, Rental Cars, and Ferries are alternatives to Airlines for getting around. While Airlines are the most popular form of transportation, these other options, as well as cruising, can be advantageous. In addition for local transportation along with Public Transportation, Hop-on Hop-Off Buses, Taxis and Ride-sharing are all acceptable options. For details about Airlines and Cruises, check out our separate articles: Airlines and Cruises. However, here are all other transport options you might want to consider:

Trains

Traveling by trains can often be much easier, faster and less expensive than airplanes. This is particularly true in Europe where trains are often the best way to travel between two cities. Tickets can often be purchased a month or more in advance. When traveling in Europe, we’ve been very pleased to use the Rail Europe service to make our trains reservations and purchase our tickets.

Scenic Trains

However, our favorite rides on trains are those that provide an incredible scenic view. While there are plenty of trains that provide scenic views in Europe, particularly when traveling in the Alps, our favorite trips on trains that we have taken so far are in North America and New Zealand. First, is the train that Cos has taken many times, and Robin did her first trip during the fall of 2022, which is Albany to New York City on Amtrak. It travels the entire way along the Hudson River and has some very nice scenery.

However, it doesn’t compare to two other rides on trains we took in 2022, and one in 2023. The first was the Rocky Mountaineer which took us from Banff, Canada to Vancouver, Canada with an overnight stay in Kamloops. Canada. Here are pictures from that incredible trip:

Trains in Alaska

The second trip was in Alaska from Anchorage down to Seward to catch a cruise. Please see DIY Travel in Alaska for more about that trip. It was truly incredible as we had previously, a few years earlier, made the same trip by bus and totally missed some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere in the USA. This section of the Alaska Railroad is so much more spectacular than the better-known Northern Route from Fairbanks thru Denali to Anchorage, that we must call this a true Hidden Gem.

Trains in New Zealand

The third trip was the TranzAlpine train that we took on the Southern Island of New Zealand from Greymouth to Christ Church. This is spectacular 5-hour trip thru Arthur’s Pass, across the Southern Alps of New Zealand. The scenery is out of this world and you will see more sheep than you can believe. For more information please see our New Zealand Post.

Rental Cars

Daily charges for renting cars have gotten expensive. During the covid pandemic, it was horrible as some places, like Hawaii that were short of cars, were charging outrageous prices to rent a car, and even today many places are still charging premium prices. Therefore, it pays to shop around to try to find a good rental deal.

Rules for Renting Cars

However, we have a few rules for renting cars. First, we generally only rent a car when public transit options don’t work. For example, if we are just staying in a major city with a good, safe mass transit system, then why do we need a rental car? Second when renting, we want to rent from the better-known rental car companies. We are not just looking to get the least costly rental. Both Robin and I are tall and small economy cars are just not for us. In addition, when we book a rental car in countries other than the United States, most of the cars that are rentable have manual shifting transmissions. While we both learned to drive on manual shifts, that was a long time ago, and now we clearly prefer rental cars with automatic shifting transmissions even though that costs a little more for the rental.

Rental Car Companies

There are many rental car companies and we have not found loyalty to be all that important with the rental car companies with two exceptions. First, you can occasionally get a free day discount after you have made a fairly large number of rentals with a single company. Second, if you can get into a company’s VIP programs than you will usually get better service.

The companies we prefer are National and Europcar. We have also used Avis, Hertz, Enterprise, and Budget. It is important for us to rent with a company that can get our car to us quickly. We find that all of the previously mentioned car rental companies can do that, especially if we are in their preferred rental programs. However, we have noticed that in some countries, Mexico in particular, there is so much paperwork involved in renting a car, that there is no way any of the companies will get you out quickly.

Round-Trip or One-Way

We primarily will rent a car for round trip service returning a car to the original place where we got the car. However, there are also situations when a one-way rental makes sense although you often pay a premium price for one-way rentals. We recently did a one-way rental with Europcar from Munich, Germany to Genoa, Italy when the airline cancelled our flight due to a strike, and the trains were already full. It would have cost us a lot more for the rental, except that the car they rented was an Italian car, and they didn’t charge us extra as we were returning it home for them. We were so pleased with their service, including helping us at the drop-off site, that we now book all our rentals in Europe with Europcar. For more information about Europcar please visit europcar.com.

Trying to figure out which rental car companies will provide the best deals can be a challenge. We recommend using one of the rental car aggregators, either Rentalcars.com or one of the more general online travel agency companies. See our Reservations post for more information. we have also used Costco to book some of our rental cars as they can have good rates (see costco.com).

Finally, if you want to use an American rental car company, that you know. We recommend National Car Rental. We have had good service from them and they let you select your car.

Public Transportation

Whenever we visit a city with a good public transportation system, we usually will use it if it is easy to understand and safe. We have recently traveled to the following cities where we found good public transportation:

• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Adelaide, Australia
• Las Vegas, Nevada – good, but limited public transportation
• London, England
• Melbourne, Australia
• New York City, New York
• Nice, France
• Paris, France
• San Francisco, California
• Sydney, Australia

We also recently traveled to the following cities where we were not comfortable using their public transportation system. Instead, we relied on taxis or ride sharing to get around:

• Barcelona, Spain
• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Milan, Italy
• Madrid, Spain
• Naples, Italy
• Papette, French Polynesia
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Rome, Italy

Taxis and Ride-Shares

A ride-share driver recently told us that taxis were going out of business. While ride-sharing has taken a good amount of business away from taxis, we don’t see that prediction happening anytime soon. Taxis are battling back and offering many of the ride-share services (e.g., credit cards and phone apps) that made ride-sharing attractive. In addition, as ride-sharing services have increased their prices, there is little cost difference between the two services.

We find these services particularly helpful in cities with unreliable or unsafe public transportation. Ride sharing is preferred by us, but only if you get assurance that you are getting a driver with a good reputation. Taxis can be particularly useful if there is a taxi line and you don’t have to wait for a cab. This works well at airports and other places, but ride-share pickups at airports are becoming more convenient.

Hop-on Hop-off Buses

We find Hop-on Hop-off Buses to be a good way to gain an overview of a new city when you first visit. Our favorite is the Big Bus. However, we often use Get Your Guide to find the best options for Hop-on Hop-off buses. The following cities that we have visited have very good Hop-on Hop-off services:

The service was extremely helpful in the first four of these cities. Because Auckland is a smaller city we didn’t find it quite as useful. However, in each of the first four cities, we got a good overview as they are all large and complex cities. Also, since taxi and car sharing services can be slow in these cities, the hop-on hop-off service can be a good low-cost alternative to just get from point A to point B.

The service was a little less helpful in Auckland as this is a smaller city. In addition, the main get-on point was near the cruise terminal, so it was very crowded when the ships get in. Despite the fact that Cos knowing Manhattan like the back of his hand, ( he lived there for most of his life) we still found that New York and London are the most helpful.

Ferries

In certain cases, ferry services may be required to visit a popular tourist attraction. Capri, (see Planning a trip to Italy) is one place where we have visited on two occasions. We learned the only way to get there is take a ferry. The service is convenient leaving from Naples, Sorrento, Amalfi and Salerno. We have booked it round trip departing from Naples. There the port is a short taxi ride from either the airport or train station. Ferry service is also a good alternative to get to many of the Greek Islands (see DIY Travel in Greece). It can also be used to get to some of The Caribbean Islands (see DIY Travel in The Caribbean).

We used a Ferry Service to get to Moorea Island in French Polynesia. Surprisingly, it was very convenient and only took thirty minutes. See our post on Best Time to Visit French Polynesia for more details. We found it interesting that there were also some roosters on our ferry. They were headed to a fight over in Tahiti.

We didn’t use the ferry service to get from Vancouver to Victoria on Vancouver Island. But we were impressed with the ferry boat that was parked in the Victoria Causeway Marina (see above).

We have also taken Ferries in Portland, Maine to get to Peaks and Great Diamond Islands ( see New England Post). In Auckland, New Zealand we took the Ferry to taste the great wineries on Waiheke Island ( see New Zealand Post). Getting on the Ferry to Waiheke Island is a real challenge as it is very crowded. On busy days, like weekends, we recommend, first getting a reservation and second getting to the ferry an hour in advance of your reservation time. Lastly, in Tasmania we took a Ferry to visit Bruny Island, as it was also the only wat to get to the Island.

Ferries that Save Time

We have also used Ferries to get across the rivers and bodies of water. The Ferry in Jamestown, Virginia that takes you across the James River is an incridble time saver to get to the southern side of the river. We used the ferry to get to the Hampton Roads Winery which had some interesting features. See our Mid-Atlantic Region Post for details.

The ferry at Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida (see DIY Travel in Florida) can be a time-saver. It allows you to cross the St. John’s River and save a good 25 miles.

In New York, ferries from Long Island to Connecticut can also be great time savers. They avoid having to travel through New York City. Passenger only ferries are also available to take people from Long Island to Fire Island. Ferry Service has also gotten very popular on the East and Hudson Rivers around New York City (see Travel in New York City).

Ferry service is also popular in San Francisco (see DIY Travel in California) particularly if you are traveling from San Francisco across the Bay to Sausalito. It is also popular in Boston when traveling from the airport to downtown.