London to Rome by Train

[Whataboutthattthen]

Hi,

Thinking I’d love to do this trip. Two kids 9 and 12. Anyone done this? Any ideas for a route? I suppose London to Paris would be the first leg but after that? Ideally maybe 2 more stops before Rome??

Would your DC enjoy a sleeper train? There's one between Paris and Venice (I'm going to Venice on it soon). You can get high speed train between Venice and Rome.
www.seat61.com is very helpful.

Interesting, I’m sure they’d love a sleeper, me not so much

That’s a great site though thanks!!

Came to second seat61.com
Its a bloody long way!

You could probably also go via Munich to Northern Italy if you don't fancy the Paris route.

We did it last year with a then 6 and 8 year old. Great fun, we loved it. Eurostar to Paris in the morning, a day wandering round then bought a picnic and got the sleeper to Milan. We booked a 6 berth compartment for the four of us, it was moderately comfortable, very clean - kids loved it. Arrived Milan in the morning and had a couple of hours then train to Rome. It was all so easy and fun. Coming back we did the same but from Florence - unfortunately had a disaster in that the Mont Blanc tunnel was closed so our sleeper was cancelled. That was all quite stressful but we did manage to get on another train. Missed the return Eurostar and had to pay many hundreds to get on a later one but insurance eventually paid out for that (bank account insurance - the travel insurance wouldn’t!).

Seat61 was the most useful website to read all about it.

We said we’d do similar again across Europe but would probably get high speed daytime trains instead of sleepers just because it’s so much easier to sort if things go wrong / get cancelled in the daytime!

We did late afternoon train to Paris. Stayed the night (at the Novotel right by Gare du Lyon) full day in Paris and then evening sleeper to Venice. Kids both 6 and worked well. You can change at Milan for Rome though bit of an early morning!