There are travellers among us who thrive when it comes to planning, but not everyone is so ‘type A’ about their holiday plans. For some, the prospect of sitting down to organise your trip makes you wonder if it’s even worth it.
Those of us firmly in the second bucket will appreciate this new bit of tech from flight-free travel specialists Byway, designed to help you plan the perfect, seamless rail trip around Europe.
So, how does it work? Well, the route planner has been designed to utilise Byway’s knowledge of transport legs, routes, and accommodation to optimise each traveller’s experience.
Head to the Byway map, enter your starting location, and the map will pull up every destination across the continent that can be reached in your selected timeframe. Below is an example of what you’ll be presented with – we selected travelling from London for two weeks in May, and it gave us 147 options!
From there, you can choose the destinations you’d like to visit, and the tool will auto-generate your trip itinerary. We selected (quite randomly) Nice, Bologna and Sorrento, and were given a full 15-day itinerary that didn’t only factor in train routes but also accommodation and recommendations of things to do in each destination.
You can personalise your trip at any point too, including adjusting the number of nights in each city and picking alternative accommodation. Pretty nifty, right?
‘My goal when I started Byway in lockdown 2020 was to help people easily create wonderful multi-stop journeys by land and sea, bringing flight-free travel to the mainstream.’ says ByWay founder and CEO Cat Jones, ‘Byway Maps makes that simpler than ever, helping you discover places that are both wonderful and feasible to visit overland based on where you’ve started, how long you’ve got, and where else you’re stopping. It combines our two million miles of expert knowledge with our cutting-edge routing tech.’
The map currently includes locations across 20 different countries, but more will be added soon. You can find out more on Byway’s website.
Did you see that a €10 train will soon connect two of Europe’s coolest cities?
Plus: A brand-new high speed train connecting 17 European cities is about to launch.
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