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.