Europe’s best no-fly city breaks you can do in a weekend

Taking a slow travel route to experience the sights, sounds and smells of European cities over a long weekend is becoming more appealing – and convenient.

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The deregulation of the European rail network has increased competition and brought prices down. Meanwhile, the roll-out of more high-speed tracks means you can reach many cities on the Continent within five or six hours.

Sleeper services are growing in number and can replace the first and last night’s hotel stay. Ferry routes offer another leisurely alternative to flying.

Online resources such as Trainline, Rail Europe and The Man in Seat 61 (seat61.com) can help you plan.

To compare ferry services, try Direct Ferries or Ferry Savers.

Or, if you would prefer that someone else looks after the logistics, Byway specialises in overland holidays, and other tour operators – including Inntravel, Intrepid and Wilderness Scotland – offer no-fly itineraries.

To get you started, we’ve found 10 options that can be enjoyed over a long weekend…

Bathe on Belgian beaches

With elegant arcades and a casino, the Flemish port city of Ostend – in the middle of the Belgian coast – was once billed as the Monte Carlo of the North.

From the railway station, it is around 15 minutes’ walk to a 7km-long golden sand beach. As you stroll through the city, take in its open-air gallery. Murals from the annual Crystal Ship festival add splashes of colour to many buildings. Since 2016, the event has lured dozens of street artists.

Another art festival, Beaufort24 (triennalebeaufort.be) is taking place until 3 November, with sculpture and other works dotted along the coast and linked by walking and cycling routes. Or time your visit for the city’s shrimp croquette festival (5 –7 October).

Ostend is also on the Belgian Coastal tram line – the world’s longest – between Knokke-Heist in the north and De Panne in the south. It covers 68 stops on its two-hour journey. En route, enjoy views of sand dunes, docklands and seaside towns, hopping on and off as you please.

Use a three-day tram pass (€15/£13) to visit the Belle Époque villas of Blankenberge, Nieuwpoort’s Blue Flag beaches and the amusement park Plopsaland De Panne (named after a Belgian children’s television character, Plop the Gnome).

Byway (byway.travel) offers a four-day round trip to Ostend from £547pp, including Eurostar to Brussels, connecting train to Ostend, and three nights at Mercure Oostende.

Masterpiece of a second city

Whether you’re trying on jewellery in the Diamond District, admiring masterpieces at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (the KMSKA, €20/£17), coveting outfits at the MoMu fashion museum (€10/£8.50), or sampling the brews and treats at breweries and chocolate shops, you can pack a lot into a long weekend in Antwerp.

Stroll its wide boulevards, browse the high-end boutiques of Schuttershofstraat and relax on the Grote Markt plaza where Renaissance-style guild houses recall the city’s heyday. In the 16th century, Antwerp was a centre of trade and grew wealthy from the profits of its port.

The cathedral-like, Art Nouveau railway station is another marvel. Designed by Louis Delacenserie, and opened in 1905, it has a huge dome above the waiting area.

Take the Eurostar to Brussels (from £39 one way), then catch a train for the hour’s journey to Antwerp (included with Eurostar’s Any Belgian Station ticket).

From the station, take the tram to Yust, a hotel-restaurant with a co-working space and a cultural calendar. Rooms from €118 (£100), yust.com.

Taste French fries in Arras

Just 20 minutes on the high-speed TGV train (from £9.60 one way) from Eurostar’s stop in Lille, Arras is less than two hours from London.

Spend an afternoon people watching on one of its many squares. Place des Héros, for example, is lined with baroque, gabled townhouses, and dominated by the Unesco-listed belfry and the 16th-century town hall.

Arras has a lively culinary scene that includes niche food festivals. If you visit at the end of September, catch the French Fries World Championships.

Mercure Arras Centre Gare has doubles from £125 (all.accor.com). It is close to the Carrière Wellington – an underground museum dedicated to the kilometres of tunnels dug beneath the city during the First World War Battle of Arras in 1917.

Cycle out of town on the Véloroute de la Mémoire trail to some of the Remembrance sites that are being spotlighted as part of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Bolt to Bordeaux

Thanks to the high-speed line south from Paris, it’s two hours by train from the French capital to Bordeaux, a beguiling city sliced in two by the Garonne River.

The city is at the heart of the eponymous wine region and evenings can be spent sampling vintages in its many wine bars.

After admiring the cobbled streets and shaded squares, make the most of the comprehensive tram system to visit the Cité du Vin for an introduction to the history of winemaking, and the Darwin Eco-système – this former military barracks in the Bastide district has been transformed into a venue for street art, electro music and a skatepark.

After a meal at one of the city’s first-class restaurants (try Casa Gaia or Vivants), stroll along the GR Bordeaux Metropole – this 160km footpath links chateaux, monuments and parks.

First Name Bordeaux Hotel in the Mériadeck neighbourhood has a communal kitchen. Doubles from €153 (£130), firstname.com.

Wake up to breakfast in Berlin

The launch of the European Sleeper train (europeansleeper.eu) means it is possible to leave London after lunch and wake up in the German capital the following morning.

Take the Eurostar to Brussels and spend a few hours exploring the city before boarding the sleeper at 7.22pm. Sleeping cars have one-, two- or three-bed cabins. The train arrives in Berlin shortly after 6am.

Right next to Berlin Central Station, Meininger Hotel (meininger-hotels.com) has doubles from €124 (£105). From here, you can walk to the grand government buildings of Berlin Reichstag and Bundestag, the neoclassic Brandenburg Gate, and the tree-lined Tiergarten Park.

At turns grand and edgy, Berlin’s neighbourhoods could easily fill a week. Cafe-hop in Prenzlauer Berg, brave the nightlife of Neukölln and soak up the green serenity of Charlottenburg.

Events next month include the Berlin Marathon (29 Sept), Berlin Art Week (11-15 Sept), and the Festival of Giant Dragons (21 Sept), during which kites up to 50m long are flown at Tempelhofer Feld park.

Jazz it up on the French Riviera

The ancient walled city of Antibes, south-west of Nice, is tranquil in autumn. November brings Jammin’Juan (6-8 Nov, tickets €15/£12.80), a festival for young jazz artists at the resort of Juan-les-Pins.

Visitors should begin in Antibes’ old town, a maze of narrow streets where attractions include the covered Marché Provençal and the Picasso Museum in Grimaldi Castle.

To reach Antibes, take the Eurostar to Paris, then board the Intercités de Nuit that leaves Paris Gare d’Austerlitz at 8.51pm and arrives to Nice at 9.25am (from €29/£25 one way, sncf-connect.com), followed by the 13-minute Lyria train from Nice to Antibes (from £5.13 one way, thetrainline.com).

B&B Bessy 10 in the heart of Cap d’Antibes, three minutes from Plage de la Garoupe has B&B from €150 (£128), bedandbreakfastbessy10.com.

Breathe in the mountain highs

Head to the medieval cobbled streets of Briançon, the highest town in France, before it transforms into a winter ski resort. Perched at an altitude of 1,326m in the Hautes-Alpes between the Italian border and Provence, the entire town is a World Heritage Site of Art and History for its Vauban-designed fortifications and 18th-century mountain military architecture.

To get there, take the Eurostar to Paris, then board the Intercités de Nuit that leaves Gare d’Austerlitz at 8.51pm and arrives in Briançon at 8.21am the following day (from €29/£25 one way, sncf-connect.com).

Hotel Edelweiss is between the Old Town and shopping streets; doubles from €89 (£76), hotel-edelweiss-briancon.fr.

Rail and sail to Utrecht

The Dutch canal city of Utrecht is a quieter take on Amsterdam with townhouses looming over bridge-linked waterways. It is also a cyclist’s utopia: the railway has the world’s largest bike park, people on bikes have right of way, and there is a comprehensive network of lanes.

Begin your journey on the overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland, then catch the metro to Rotterdam Alexander to change to the mainline train to Utrecht, which takes about an hour and a half. A RailSail ticket from London or a Greater Anglia station (such as Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester) to Hoek van Holland starts from £62, which includes the train fare and standard ferry ticket, stenaline.co.uk)

The Hunfeld hotel in the Domkwartier district is seven minutes’ walk from the station and has doubles from €156 (£133), thehunfeld.com.

Hop across to Dieppe

Take the four-hour ferry across the Channel from Newhaven to Dieppe on Normandy’s Alabaster Coast for its Saturday morning market. The crossing is a convenient way to travel to France as a foot passenger from (from £31 one way, dfds.com) thanks to the short walk from Newhaven station to the ferry terminal.

In Dieppe, there is a connecting bus (£2) that takes you from the harbour to the station in the centre of town.

In the third week of November, the port hosts the annual Herring and Scallop Festival, when the pavements are packed with smoking grills as the restaurants, brasseries and bars celebrate Dieppe’s fishing heritage. Hotel Aguado on the seafront has doubles from €127 (£108), hoteldieppe.com.

Wake up in the Scottish Highlands

The Caledonian Sleeper highlander route from London Euston is like a slow teleport to the Scottish Highlands towards Inverness, a city bisected by the River Ness.

The service departs Euston at 9.15pm on weekdays, arriving to Inverness at 8.45am. Return services from Inverness depart at 8.45pm weekdays and 8.25pm Sundays. There’s no sleeper on Saturdays.

You can also join the service at one of the stops en route, including Crewe, Preston and Edinburgh. A room in a classic berth starts from £140pp, one way (sleeper.scot).

From Inverness station, it is less than 10 minutes to reach the live music venue Hootananny Inverness. Mumford and Sons, Sam Fender, Jake Bugg, Dougie MacLean and Russell Crowe have all played in its Ceilidh Bar. You can also now stay there: this summer, Hootananny opened six rooms and a suite, with doubles from £256, hootanannyinverness.co.uk.

Easy day trips from the city include the golden sands of coastal Dornoch (one hour by bus), Culloden battlefield (25 minutes) and Loch Ness (30 minutes).