Today I finished booking my rail tickets and hotels for the next month. I used booking.com and the Accor Hotels website to find some okay deals. Marseille for the quarter finals was the worst. There were no easily findable hotels near the centre of town. Nantes was pretty hard as well booking.com only had one hotel left it would seem but I now have a roof over my head and travel plans for all of the matches I have tickets for.

So in the next month im going to get to know the insides of the Eurostar and the TGVs quite well. Beats flying though. Some of the airplane ticket prices were astronomical already even on the budget airlines.

My father is doing most of the world cup in a camper van. I would have joined him but my employers seem to want me to turn up to work.

Currently sitting on a TGV between Paris and Nantes. Its really quite full. I was lucky on the eurostar as I got 2 seats to myself. The connection across Paris was a bit close. It is probably worth prebuying your Metro tickets at the eurostar terminal in london and knowing which metro line you want. In this case line 4 "the pink one" between Gare du Nord and Montparnasse. The walk from the tube to the train is quite long.
Hopefully i can find somewhere to watch tonights crunch match between France and Ireland. I suspect France will win.

Thankfully last night we didnt drink to much so i feel relatively okay. Made the train with plenty of time to spare. The train is very purple. There is also quite a bit of legroom which makes a change from yesterdays train. There is enough room i dont mind having the window seat. Im normally an aisle man given my size. Does mean i can stare at the french countryside as it rushes pass.

Instead of taking the eurostar from London to Lille then tgv to Marseille im starting my travels from Utrecht. So first a train to Schipol, then a plane to Clermont-Ferrand then a plane to Marseille. Then a camper van to Arles. Since we couldnt find any decent hotels in Marseille. So we will be taking trains from Arles to Marseille for the matches this weekend.

Whizzing through the french countryside on hopefully my last tgv. Its a double decker which is quite fun. There is a lot of legroom even in second class. I can even have the table out which is quite a novelty these days. Toilets are broken though.
3g coverage is a bit patchy in the countryside. Still 1.5 hours till Lille already been on this train for 3 hours(the one from Arles to Marseille took an hour). Admittedly I suspect its a lot faster than you could do in Britain. Marseille to Lille is a long way after all.

... full train of people getting off to get on another. 45 minutes is possibly enough time to change from tgv to the eurostar normally at lille but not when everyone was on it. I made it but i do wonder if they will have to hold the train or will the time taken to load us all give everyone a chance to make it through security.