Interrail Day 1 - Paris - Sacré Coeur and Montmartre

We arrived in Paris at about 2pm on the 13th July and because of my ruthless planning we knew exactly how to get to our hostel without looking at directions. As soon as we went down into the metro there were some crazy knife-wielding crackheads screaming at each other which really freaked me out, Jack didn't seem to notice the knife and was just staring at them while I was tugging at his sleeve and trying to avoid eye contact... Luckily they were on the opposite platform so we weren't too much at risk. Our hostel was called Caulaincourt Square Hostel and I really loved it... now that I think about it, we were really lucky because it had all the things which we later came to really value in a hostel and it was a great start to the trip. The area was beautiful, close to transport links, supermarkets and beautiful landmarks (Sacré Coeur was like 2 minutes away)as well as having breakfast included and a good kitchen. We walked up to Sacré Coeur after getting some lunch from the local shop. The walk up from the hostel was great because, since it's a popular tourist attraction there's loads going on there. A lot of it is just tourist trapping cafés and street venders, but as Jack pointed out, Paris has done a lot to maintain the romantic reputation it has, and so everything is presented in this whimsical, 'Parisian' style which means there's a real atmosphere which was particularly strong around Sacré Coeur. We went twice that day, first in the daytime, and then later on again that night where we saw loads of fireworks owing to the fact that it was the eve of Quatorze Juillet, the French national day and so around 11pm we had a great view over Paris and everyone else's festivities :) In the meantime, we wandered into the centre of Paris and when Jack wanted to start heading back to the hostel I protested and said there was plenty of time left in the day at 6pm. We looked at a metro map and decided to go to Pere-Lachaise cemetery which turned out to be a mistake because it was closed, and we got totally lost trying to find our way in... and out again.  

Sculpture outside Pere Lachaise Cimitiere

 

The Sacré Coeur Basilica at night

By booking in advance we managed to find cheap Eurostar tickets to Paris at about £38 one way, although if you want to fly skyscanner.net is a really great flight-finding website :)

5 days to go!

As well as using this to record & remember my travels, I thought it might prove useful to anyone doing the same sort of thing, should they stumble across it, to see how I planned the trip. So partially to myself and partially to a big echoey black hole. .. Here goes (:
So me and Jack are going interrailing (my phone always tries to correct that to interracial) in a few days,  I've finished my exams and am mostly focusing on organising and planning our 33 day long trip! It's taken many reshuffles and changes of plan to get to this point, so I thought I'd share my reasoning! Our current route looks like this:

Paris - Barcelona - Avignon - Marseille - Nice - Praia A Mare - Sorrento - Naples - Rome - Milan - Zurich - Bern - Interlaken - Budapest - Berlin - Amsterdam

Originally we started off with many more stops in mind, but research about train times and routes cut many of those out for us. We'll be taking overnight trains between Paris and Barcelona (Paris-Portbou is a much cheaper alternative and allows us to stop at the Dali museum on the way which is wonderful), Nice and Praia A Mare (the actual sleeper train leg is between Genoa and Maratea), Zurich and Budapest, Budapest and Berlin. Using raildude.com, which allows you to find any station and see which lines run to/from/through there, and bahn.com which has a basically complete timetable for the whole of Europe, we realised before it was too late that Croatia would be impractical :( and it was replaced by a few days travel free in the South of Italy, where we've booked into a beach front hostel called Onda Road.
The other website I found really useful was tripit.com, where you can basically plan a trip and put in lodging, rail journeys and costs and keep track of your planned movements, which helps when you're staying in like 20 different places and making loads of changes. I also used tripadvisor.com to find out more about what to do in different cities, hostelbookers.com for hostels and booking.com for alternatives when I couldn't find a hostel.

One of the main reasons I planned so much in advance was that I had no idea how much to save up and how much I would need for accommodation. Because I'm a student of French I wanted to spend a fair amount of time in France, and our route basically ended up tying us to the south of France which is beautiful but very expensive accommodation-wise. Therefore my advice would be to avoid this area unless it's a must see for you, or you can minimise your time there.

Italy was a must for me and the overnight train that took us right to the bottom straight away solved the problem of whether it was worth the time we'd have to spend travelling all the way down and back up again. I desperately wanted to do the Bernina Express route that crosses the Italian/Swiss border (it's a scenic train) so our next stop became Switzerland, which although notoriously expensive seemed beautiful and we'll be there for my 18th birthday, so it's lucky I'm a cheap date!
Zurich is a big transport hub, so we then were left with our options open. We initially wanted to go to Vienna, but we found Budapest more appealing for its quirkier attractions, such as the thermal baths. Naturally, Berlin and Amsterdam then followed, and we'll be flying home from Brussels in time for A-Level results day! :(

After adding up the accommodation costs, it should be somewhere around the £500 mark (although I'd stress its possible to do it for less, you'll see we've included plenty of beautiful and practical places), plus 400 for the pass. I'll have about £20-25 per day on top of that, and Jack will probably have more, but it depends how much of our budget will have to go on things we buy before we leave - small things like toiletries that add up.