Rome2Rio
This app is my favourite navigation app. I wouldn’t dream of taking a trip without it. In one easy App, it takes all the stress away of trying to figure out how to get to anywhere you want to go. It simply shows you all the possible options of travelling from Point A to Point B by
plane, bus, train, ferry or automobile (taxi, car, ride sharing, etc). It states how long it will take, the approx. cost, and even links you to the airlines, bus, or train schedules so you
don’t have to wait to get to the station to purchase a ticket.
Why would you use Rome2rio?
To take the fear out of travelling. A lot of people shy away from booking self guided trips due to the unknown of transportation. Now you don’t have to worry about that! You can research before you leave on vacation so you will know all your costs and how you will get around.
My experience
I first used this app on a 3 month solo trip to Europe and not once did it let me down. I am sure that it is not always 100% accurate but on my 3 month trip, it never disappointed me and the information was always correct!
How does it work?
Simply type in “where from” and “where to” This could be country to country, city to city, airport to hotel; address to address the options are endless.
Information it does not provide
Please be aware that if you are going from one country to another, it will not tell you what entry requirements you need or what borders you will be crossing. Please ensure that you research this information before you book your ticket. You do not want to be turned away upon crossing the border and having to incur extra costs.
In this example, we are going to start at our hotel in Brussels, and arrive at a hotel in Paris.
There will be 3 separate searches:
1. Country to country (so we can decide how we are travelling)
2. Hotel in Paris to the bus station Paris (In this case we decided to go by bus)
3. Bus station in Brussels to the hotel in Brussels
How to get from Paris, France to Brussels, Belgium
1. Country to Country
(to figure out how we want to travel)
Type in your beginning (Paris, France)
and ending destinations (Brussels, Belgium). Click Search
As you can see it gives you 6 possible transportation options:
• Train
• Bus Eurolines FR
• Bus Ecolines
• Rideshare
• Drive
• Fly
If you click on the expansion
arrow, it will provide more information.
For this example, let’s click on two different modes of
transportation. (You can click on them all if you are following along on your phone – just press on the back button at the bottom right of your phone to come back to the previous screen.)
I have decided that I would like to travel either by train or bus.
So let’s see what details each has to offer.
Click the expansion arrow in the train section.
Option #1 – Train
1.From this example, you can see you will have to take one train which will take 1 hour and 22 minutes, will cost $110 -$160 and leaves hourly.
2.Once you arrive, you will transfer to the tram which leaves every 6 minutes and will cost $4. There are 3 different trams you can take. #3, #4, and #32
3.Lastly you will need to walk approx. 258 meters (about 3mins) to be in Brussels.
Let’s expand on this by clicking the expansion arrow to find out more information. Let’s start with the train information.
Voila! Here is a list of train schedules, with the train Schedule, Operator Details, Frequency, Duration, Estimated Price, Class, When to Book, and their website.
Because you have not entered your travel date yet, most likely this information is only an estimate but it should give you enough information for you to want to pursue this option or find another one.
If I decided I wanted to pursue this option, I would choose to leave the Rome2rio app by either clicking on the website or typing in their website on google search.
Option #2 – By Bus
Let’s go to the Bus option and see if that would be better.
There appears to be two different bussing options with very different pricing.
As they both are about the same duration, I am going to explore the cheaper option first with Bus Ecolines.
Click on the Bus Ecolines expansion arrow.
This particular bus leaves from the Paris Rue de Maubeuge Station. It appears it only travels between Paris and Brussels twice a week and takes 3 hours 43 minutes with an estimated price of $18-28 CAD.
Let’s find out more details and explore this option by leaving Rome2rio by clicking on ecolines.net to take us to their website
I’ve entered Paris as my departure and tried to enter Brussels but it doesn’t appear to be an option. The possible reason this bus goes twice a week and is cheaper than the other bus is because it is a partial trip on the way to another city. My option at this point would be to call or email ecolines and talk to an agent to obtain the rest of the information.
In this case, I am not going to do that as I am just going to investigate the second bus option. … So back to Rome2rio app.
Click the expansion arrow beside Paris Gallieni to Brussels-North and the Bus schedule will open.
