Nowadays, there are a whole host of ways to travel, with the journey sometimes as comfortable as the destination. Whether in the car, by airplane or on the sea, travellers have a whole host of options at their disposal.
One reporter has now taken on the challenge of ranking overnight trains and cruise ships, judging them based on their merits to decide which is preferable for travellers. Joey Hadden, a reporter for Business Insider, spent 140 hours on overnight trains and 14 nights on cruises, finding that the open seas were more relaxing while trains offered more freedom to explore destinations. Hadden first took an overnight train from New York City to Miami in October 2021, a 30-hour journey spent in a private cabin with two chairs and two bunk beds. Since then, she has spent six more nights on trains, trying out accommodation from sleeping in seats and shared rooms to private cabins.
Hadden said: “I don’t recommend booking seats and shared cabins on overnight trains, but private accommodations are a different story.”
In the UK, overnight train services are available on the Caledonian Sleeper or the Great Western Railway Night Riviera Sleeper. Caledonian Sleeper trains travel between London and Scotland, with two departures each night from Sunday to Friday.
A classic room single ticket for one of these services starts from £140. Night Riviera trains travel six nights a week between London Paddington and Penzance and costs around £135 for a one-way private single-bed sleeper cabin.
Across Europe, there are a number of different sleeper services, including the ÖBB Nightjet from Vienna to Hamburg and Rome, the Sofia-Istanbul Express between Bulgaria and Turkey and the European Sleeper routes between Brussels, Prague and Venice.
On water, Hadden took her first cruise in April 2022, which was a seven-night Caribbean voyage to Honduras, Mexico and the Bahamas on board Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas vessel.
The following year, she took a week’s cruise in the Mediterranean through Spain, Italy and France with Virgin Voyages, a luxury brand offering adult-only cruises.
On price, it is difficult to say that one method of travelling is more affordable, with Hadden paying between £150 and £750 for standard overnight private cabins, with the price rising to £6,800 for a single night on the luxry Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train.
In comparison, the Royal Caribbean cruise set Hadden back by around £225 per night for an ocean-view cabin, with dining options included aboard.
Hadden advises that train travel requires “a lot” of preparation.
She added: “In 2022, I spent two weeks traveling by train through Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. Since the countries aren’t too far apart, I took only two overnight trains, and the rest took only a few hours. In addition to mapping out train times, I had to book accommodations and plan activities, meals, and transportation at each destination.
“While this was challenging and a bit overwhelming at times, it felt liberating to create my trip from scratch and decide how long I would stay in each place. In this way, traveling by train is freeing.”
In contrast, she found cruise lines take care of all the planning, and a single cruise booking amounts to confirming every leg of a train-based trip at once.
However, cruise trips give travellers less freedom to roam through the spots they travel to, with Hadden finding that most port stops were about eight hours long, not long enough to sample more than a flavour of the area.
“I booked excursions through the cruise line, including beach days, hikes, and tours. Some were compelling, but ultimately, I didn’t feel I had enough time to get more than a taste of the destinations we stopped at.”
While trains also came out on top in terms of boarding, taking just minutes compared to reboarding a cruise ship with airport-style security, it did not triumph in every category.
Accommodation on a train is small, according to Hadden, and usually does not include a private bathroom to freshen up, whereas cruise ships can boast bigger floor space and beds, as well as a sea view or balcony.
Views from a train, though, are clear of cruise ships in Hadden’s experience.
While her Amtrak journeys coasted through a range of environments, she said cruise views could be “epic” but were “often the same”.
In all, Hadden found train trips left her more fulfilled despite the more comfortable surrounds of a cruise, though it is for every traveller to decide which they prefer.
