A summer holiday bookended by three days of travel time each way isn’t the obvious choice for a family with two young children. However, our Greek friend had recently moved with his family back to Athens from Essex and we were keen to visit.
Travelling there overland with our two children, aged six and three, wasn’t our first thought, but the more we thought about splurging money and carbon on an airline that was only nominally “low-cost”, it began to seem more appealing.
Like many people I know, I had assumed that my right to Interrail had elapsed around the time that I became ineligible for a Young Person’s Railcard. I was soon disabused of that notion – anyone can use Interrail. The seven-day Global Pass we bought – allowing us to hop on and off trains in up to 33 countries on seven days in one month – allowed us enough time to get to Greece and back.
At a set €381 per adult (along with supplements for certain trains) it was more expensive than flying, although not wildly so (and prices do not rise and fall with demand). Children travel for free on the pass until they’re 12, whereas we have been paying for them to fly since they hit the age of three. You can take almost as much baggage as you like (we brought home a lot of olive oil). And it was a wonderful adventure. Our journey to Greece ended up being one of the best parts of the holiday.
We boarded the Eurostar at St Pancras in the afternoon and emerged in a dark, wet Paris two-and-a-half hours later. I had booked a last-minute hotel near the Gare du Nord and it turned out to be a bit of a dive – grubby floors and clammy beds and a plug that didn’t fit the sink’s plughole. The kids were enchanted, and bounced from bed to bed until they could no longer keep their eyes open. We sat up chatting, watching Paris outside the window, excited to be on the move.
The next morning, we picked up some pastries at a boulangerie before boarding the train at Gare de l’Est. Every time we changed trains – first at Strasbourg, then at Basel – the weather improved, and the landscapes became more dramatic.
From Basel our train plunged through the Alps, tunnelling between mountain valleys before emerging into sunlit Italy. At Domodossola in Piedmont, we caught the Saturday market, stocking up on cheese, strawberries and salami for a picnic, before a final train journey that descended to Milan in the early evening.
Milan’s Centrale station is palatial, soaring skywards with stone pillars and sculptures, a cathedral to transport. We just had time to grab some pasta near the station before heading back in and boarding the sleeper to Bari.
We had one of the four-berth couchettes to ourselves. The children were ecstatic, and eventually slept on the bunks that folded out from the walls. We sat up again, sharing some wine from the buffet car, feeling the night breeze through the open window and watching small stations pass in the dark. It was a shame to go to bed, but we had an early start.
The guard woke us at half-past five with an espresso. We stumbled into Bari in the early morning, where it was already warm. We had arrived in Puglia in summer. We found a playground in a park near the station, full of early morning dog-walkers, and then went in search of cappuccino and brioche.
The timetables would work better on the return trip, giving us a full day before catching the sleeper back to Milan, but in this direction we had to press on to make the next connection. With more time on the return, we would be able to use our rail passes to travel down the coast to the fishing town of Polignano a Mare, where we ate octopus and splashed around in a churning sea before returning to explore the Bari’s exquisite old town in the late afternoon.
In the labyrinthine streets women sat in their doorways chatting and selling hand-made pasta; kids played football in cobbled alleys. It was hard to believe that people lived quotidian lives in such beauty. At dusk we found excellent pizza in a tiny square, unceremoniously served in its cardboard box, and we ate it surrounded by bougainvillea and with swifts screaming above us.
On the outbound trip, the ferry to Greece left at lunchtime. We played on deck and scanned the Adriatic Sea for dolphins. The food in the cafeteria was excellent – fresh salads and hearty stews, served with good olive oil and good wine. Our cabin had a window and we watched the sun go down over the sea before turning in, rocked to sleep by the thrum of the engines.
At dawn on the fourth day we were slipping past Kefalonia and Lefkada, softened by the early light. Not long after, we docked in Patras. It was a short bus and a shorter train to our friends’ place on the outskirts of Athens.
Yes, we were ready for a holiday. But we were in Greece, and it was hot, and we felt like we had earnt one. We had a stack full of memories and the children had bulging scrapbooks. And despite taking us three-and-a-half days to get there, we were already looking forward to the journey home.
