London takes a potshot at New Jersey...

Try getting a non-bank holiday R/T Friday ticket on Eurostar. You're looking at £300 for a standard semi-flex ticket. Premier adds about another £100, and business another £100 on top of that.

I found a train to Rome. Well, four trains. Shortest time I found was 21 hours, 27 minutes.If you leave St Pancras in London at 1.31PM on a Friday you can be in Rome at 11.58AM the next day. I'm not sure how much it costs because I'd have to buy 4 separate train tickets.

However, I can fly there for $170 in 2h40m.

Flights are cheaper in Europe, not trains. A train from London to the south of France would be in the 9-10 hour region and can easily cost over £400, round-trip (cheapest is probably about £150). However, the cheap airlines fly there in under two hours for as little as £60, round-trip and rarely more than £200.

PeggyC said:
Of course it is about cost. If we could drive to FLA for the weekend, a lot of us would. But it's too expensive to make that trip for just two or three days. In Europe, of course, you can get to Italy or France from England by train, and I'd wager it costs way less than a flight from Newark to Miami.

True, but you have to factor in several hours on either end getting to/from the airport. Trains leave and arrive in the middle of town. Also, in my experience, customs is much faster in train stations and if you have big bags you can take them on the train, meaning no waiting in baggage claim at the airport.

I would fly from London to Nice, but there's no way I would fly from London to Paris, for example.

deiscane said:
Flights are cheaper in Europe, not trains. A train from London to the south of France would be in the 9-10 hour region and can easily cost over £400, round-trip (cheapest is probably about £150). However, the cheap airlines fly there in under two hours for as little as £60, round-trip and rarely more than £200.

PeggyC said:
Of course it is about cost. If we could drive to FLA for the weekend, a lot of us would. But it's too expensive to make that trip for just two or three days. In Europe, of course, you can get to Italy or France from England by train, and I'd wager it costs way less than a flight from Newark to Miami.

And there you see a perfect example of the phrase "Brits think 100 miles is a long way, Americans think 100 minutes is a long time."

Flights within Europe can be had for a lot cheaper than here. Popping down to the Mediterranean for a weekend is a lot more feasible from London than Ft Lauderdale from EWR.

It's like taking a NJ Transit bus in the air, but when you get off you're in Venice and not Port Authority.

Just returned from Spain. It was less than 1/2 the price to fly from Barcelona to Granada than to take the the cheapest train.