No fly holiday in Europe

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Any bright ideas? Train ideally but open to ferry. We like a city break to somewhere with an old town we can wander round, no doubt a handsome castle, cathedral etc. Good art gallery wouldn't go amiss.

I'd love Lisbon but I think that's going to take too long and cost too much for us right now. Waiting to hear back from operators on that. Just been looking at Vienna, promising but I feel like there could be some really interesting cities that we're not thinking of.

Open to making two centre or having a stop off to break the journey.

Personally, I can't wait to try the new Nightjet mini cabins;

https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/nightjet-new-generation.htm#mini-cabins

There are various companies who can organise train travel hols for you. The advantage of using a travel agent would be that they can "rescue" your itinerary if it hits a problem like floods/strikes/landslides.

I follow a bloke on Twitter (Andy B travels) who suggested that a first-timer would be best advised to fly out and get the train back home.

Sadly there are no longer any ferries from the UK to Scandinavia or Germany, so from Edinburgh the nearest ferry to Europe is Newcastle - Amsterdam, which might well eat half of your budget if you take a car.

From there you could head north east to Germany and travel via Hannover towards the old East German cities - e.g. Leipzig, Dresden - and the Baltic coastal towns like Rügen and Rostock. Very interesting places hardly visited by British tourists, and far more affordable than the Rhine valley cities, Hamburg or Munich.

@CrepuscularCritter I am liking the sound of Ghent.

Apologies for not naming the posters asking questions, I'll try to answer:

It won't be peak season. Possibly February.
We have done Newcastle to Netherlands car ferry before at Easter, it didn't break the bank, at the time anyway.

It's not phobia, it's primarily environmental, but I do quite like travelling by train as well.

Flying one way slightly defeats the object, for me, anyway. I don't feel we're beginners. When DS was a toddler we went to a resort just south of Barcelona and back by train. Slightly more pinched for time now that we're starting further north. We lived in Kent then and Ebbsfleet was about 15 minutes away.

Strasbourg also sounds intriguing.

St Sebastián and Bayonne are straightforward by train and close enough to combine did that 2 years ago and this year went to Baden Baden in Germany . Trains have been straightforward and although there were some delays nothing major.

I’m off to Ghent, Lille and Bruges next week on the Eurostar. They’re all fairly close by to each other.

Not helpful but my dads annual holiday was always driving from the uk to Malta and back .
He gave himself 6 weeks to do it though

We went by train from Edinburgh to Rome and back in September. The first long day we got to Nancy in France. On the way back we did Rome to Edinburgh in two long days, stopping overnight in Paris. We had interrail tickets. We stopped in Nancy, Basel, Lugano, Venice, Bologna and Rome. I would definitely do it again, much better than flying.

Strasbourg is great and you could either use it as a base to mooch into Alsace and small pretty towns and/or vineyards, or combine it with somewhere not too far away. Luxembourg is nice, Trier is apparently a hidden gem (I’ve not been but heard great things), and Nancy has stunning Art Nouveau architecture - all of these would have enough for a few days but probably not a week and would combine nicely with Strasbourg.

If you like cathedrals, another option would be Reims (also has champagne houses….). It’s magnificent.

We went to Seville for 8 nights at half term and used it as a base for travelling out to different places by train - Cordoba, Cadiz, Herez, Rhonda etc. It was absolutely stunning and prices for food etc very reasonable. It was a huge success with the whole family (two adults two children)

Admittedly we did fly there so I have no idea about how long it would take to get there by train initially but it worked so well.

There must be other places in Europe you could do similar.

We had a super few days in France this year. We flew to Limoges, but you could drive from any of the channel ports. Around Tours, Chinon, Poitiers and Saumur. Loads of interesting medieval towns, abbeys and castles, linked to one of our most interesting periods of history. We then went onto La Rochelle, which is a buzzing city and finished with a few days on the Ile de Re. By train, La Rochelle has a direct train to Paris, but it is v busy with Parisians in August. The Ile de Re is covered in cycle tracks so easy to get around once you get on it.

My friend went to Ibiza by train in 2 days by doing London - Paris, overnight in Paris, Paris - Barcelona, then night ferry with a cabin from Barcelona.

I think from Edinburgh you're probably looking at northern France and the Benelux countries. From Edinburgh to London is 4 and a half hours then you need to allow two or three hours to get on the Eurostar. We've done Newcastle to Paris and I loved it and thought it was much nicer than flying but e.g. we looked into taking the train to Copenhagen and it was 19h+ travelling with multiple changes which was too much for us with 3 kids.

I would probably choose the south of France. Lyon, possibly combined with Montpellier or Marseille. All can be reached fairly quickly from Paris. With Marseille you also have the option of taking the night train from Paris.

I have traveled from Edinburgh to the French Alps, Edinburgh to Scandinavia, Scandinavia to the Mediterrenean by train, it's all doable. Nowadays I do nearly always break up the journey, and usually regret it if I don't. Very long train days are tiring, no fun, and highly stressful if your first train is already delayed/cancelled. If you want to go any further than Belgium/Northern France, I'd break up the journey in either Brussels/Paris or London.

I recently spent a few days in Luxembourg, which is absolutely stunning! It's on seriously vertical levels, with some spectacular views.

You could combine it with Brussels, as you can get direct trains from there.