Train from Barcelona to London

[toffeecush1on]

We are thinking of getting the train home after our cruise rather than flying, does anyone have any experience of this and also a rough cost?

Thanks

[Rossalino]

We've done a couple of train journeys to Europe (not Barcelona though) and I find this website really helpful:

seat61/Spain.htm#Lon..._daytime_train

[Gill H]

We did Paris to Barcelona in September. We had 3 days in DLP, then got the RER to Paris Gare de Lyon (45 minutes) and got the train from there to Barcelona. It took six and a half hours and the views are ravishingly beautiful.

Flying would have saved us a few hours, but by the time you factor in getting to the airport 2 hours before and hanging around, and all the faff once you land, it was a good use of the time to go by train.

We paid a bit extra for first class. There's no food at the seats (though they did come round with coffee once) but the seats are bigger and more comfortable. Make sure you get seats upstairs for the views.

We booked through the Voyages SNCF website because we're collecting Avios and it offered them. But we also had a ticket alert set up with loco2 who we would have used otherwise. Price was the same. Can't remember how much but think it was about £65 each. You can pay in sterling on either of those sites.

We couldn't pick our seats, but were happy with the ones we had.

If you were going to London you would need to get from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord to pick up the Eurostar.

Eurostar is cheapest booked as soon as tickets are released - about 10 months in advance. Tickets only ever get dearer (unless there is one of their rare special offers, but don't count on those) so grab them as soon as you can.