I needed to reach Istanbul from my home in the UK a few weeks ago, so naturally I hopped on a Eurostar and competed the 2,104 mile journey from London to Turkey overland by train.

This was actually the fifth journey I've made between London and Istanbul (the third round trip!) since 1995, but this time I had a camcorder so was able to make a video summary of the trip, an epic 3-night journey in 12 minutes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVuOtaID1Rk

It might de-mystify train travel across Europe from the Thames to the Bosporus, and show how relatively simple, safe and straightforward it is - If it inspires anyone to see more than the inside of a plane, great!

ttt

Great video and thanks for posting.

Yes, thanks so much for making and posting the video -- and thanks so much for all your work at your site!

Great video!

s

Wonderful video! Have you ever read books by the travel writer Paul Theroux? He made similar trips by train that were/are great reads.

Great! Thanks.

Very enjoyable video.

Thanks, enjoyed it. Aside from seeing the Serbian-Bulgarian border again - I spent hours looking at that a couple of years back - was your train on time into Sofia?

15-20 late into Sofia, I hardly noticed that. 45 late into Cerkezkoy, bus arrived Istanbul an hour after the train was timed to arrive. So no big deals.

Maybe I should have taken the night train to Sofia. Arriving on time would have been better than watching the smugglers, I'm sure they were the reason we sat at the border so long.

Fabulous! Happy memories of trains through Europe. About a year ago there was a bus all the way from the Turkish border to Istanbul. Looks like work has progressed since then. The best bit of all is arriving on the Bosphorus as the sun is coming up.

Thanks for posting and I do appreciate the information on your site.

Different strokes though -- I'd much rather have those extra 2-3 days in Turkey or wherever I was heading. Time is too precious a commodity at this stage in life.

I didn't think I was going to watch all 12+ minutes, but I was riveted!

bookmarking to watch tomorrow

Thanks for the enjoyable trip!

Much more pleasant than the overnight train we took from
Istanbul to Ankara. A previous passenger had forgotten
some kind of food and it had rotted in one of the storage
cupboards in our compartment. Made for a very long and
smelly night!

another great video.

How neat. Thanks for the video.

What a wonderful video. Thanks for making it and for sharing.

Thanks so much, Mark, for yet anohter great video. Watching it makes me second guess choosing to fly BCN to ORY next month...