London–Paris–Versailles–Zurich Train Journey: Europe Rail Travel, City Sightseeing & Palace Tours

On our way to the Palace of Versailles. Did you know the palace's garden fountains actually run on a 17th-century hydraulic system that once used 14 water wheels and 221 pumps? During Louis XIV's reign, the gardens consumed more water daily than the entire city of Paris. The king's gardeners would sometimes paint grass green during droughts to maintain appearances.

London ➡️ Paris ➡️ Versailles ➡️ Zurich.  Our European train travel adventure continues with what we call the "Channel Dash" - that mad sprint from London to Paris via the underground tunnel that still feels like science fiction. After chasing solstice shadows at Stonehenge and getting thoroughly windswept in Scottish coastal towns, we figured civilization might be nice. So we traded North Berwick's sea spray for Parisian perfume, proving that sometimes the best travel hack is just letting someone else drive the train while you nap.

The Eurostar isn't just a train - it's a geopolitical handshake with wheels. This steel worm burrows under what Napoleon called "a ditch that would be crossed only by lunatics and Englishmen." Turns out we're at least one of the two, with complimentary Wi-Fi.

Watch "London Paris Eurostar Château de Versailles Musée du Louvre la Tour Eiffel & Paris Zürich TGV Lyria"

Our video version captures the essential truth of European rail travel: it's mostly staring out windows wondering why your country doesn't have this (full video here).

London's Moor Park to St Pancras involves more underground tunnels than the actual Channel crossing. The British have this delightful habit of building magnificent train stations that make you forget you're about to spend two hours in a metal tube underwater. St Pancras is all Gothic revival splendor, like someone decided a cathedral should have departure boards and overpriced coffee.

Eurostar: The Underwater Commute in European train travel

Eurostar #3213 looking suspiciously French already at Gare du Nord. The train's distinctive nose cone was designed to prevent "tunnel boom" - a sonic phenomenon that would otherwise shatter wine glasses in Kent. Funny how they worried about wine glasses when the real concern should have been British tea cups.

Where the Magic Happens (The Stations, Not the Tunnel)

London's St Pancras was originally going to be demolished in the 1960s. A campaign saved it by the narrowest of margins, which means we almost had to board the Eurostar at some concrete monstrosity called "London International Rail Terminal." The station's Barlow Train Shed roof spans 240 feet without central supports - a Victorian flex that still impresses.

Paris's Gare du Nord handles more passengers than any railway station outside Japan. It's also where they filmed the station scenes in "The Bourne Identity," though Jason Bourne never had to figure out where the bathrooms were while dragging luggage.

Gare du Nord's facade features 23 statues representing destinations served - but none for London until 1994. The station's clock tower is intentionally shorter than Sacré-Cœur to respect Parisian skyline rules. During WWII, French Resistance workers deliberately mislabeled German military shipments here.

What most people don't know is that Eurostar almost went bankrupt in the early 2000s. The original business plan assumed everyone would pay first-class fares, which turned out to be optimistic when people realized they could fly for half the price. A restructuring and cheaper tickets saved it, proving that sometimes capitalism works if you lower your expectations.

The same train looking decidedly more British just hours earlier. Eurostar trains have to switch between four different railway electrification systems during the journey. Their wheels are specially designed to expand and contract with temperature changes in the tunnel.

We stumbled on a quirky tidbit while waiting at St Pancras. An obscure 1889 engineering journal, buried in the British Library archives, noted that the original plan for a Channel tunnel included a pneumatic railway powered by giant steam-driven fans. The Victorian engineers were dead serious about shooting trains through a tube using air pressure. They even built a test track in South London that launched a dummy carriage into a hay bale at 40 mph. The project was shelved when someone realized passengers might not enjoy being human cannonballs, but it just goes to show that our underwater commute could have been even weirder.

The Eurostar's Weirdest Secrets

Early Eurostar trains had a secret compartment behind the driver's cab for transporting the French and British royal families' blood supplies. Apparently, even royalty needs emergency O-negative when crossing the Channel. The trains also originally carried Eurotunnel service vehicles in special compartments - like a train within a train for fixing the tunnel.

The "Eurostar Snow" trains to ski resorts use the same trains but with extra storage for skis and a mysterious ability to make British passengers wear more colorful clothing.

Speed Demon Technology

Eurostar trains use regenerative braking that puts energy back into the grid - basically, every time they slow down, they help power someone's toaster in Kent.

Also, the train's aerodynamics were so carefully studied that engineers discovered the original design created a vacuum that would suck birds into the air intake. They added grilles after testing, saving countless French sparrows.

Our phone GPS registering 185 mph while we drank tea that didn't even spill. The train actually slows to 100 mph in the tunnel due to air pressure considerations. At full speed, the Eurostar covers 88 feet per second - about the length of a blue whale every three seconds.

The collision avoidance system uses French and British signaling simultaneously, which is either brilliant engineering or a diplomatic nightmare depending on which control room you ask. During testing, they discovered that the tunnel's pressure changes could cause ears to pop painfully, so they added gradual pressure equalization - the world's most expensive nasal decongestant.

The Chunnel: Europe's Most Expensive Rabbit Hole

A Eurostar emerging in France like a metallic groundhog checking for shadows. The tunnel's French exit is 55 feet lower than the British entrance due to geological differences. Construction crews from both sides missed meeting by just 6 inches horizontally and 2 inches vertically.

Napoleon's Revenge

The first serious Channel Tunnel attempt wasn't in 1986 but in 1881. Victorian engineers actually dug 1.8 miles from Shakespeare Cliff before Parliament got nervous about French invasion and pulled funding. The abandoned tunnel later became a mushroom farm, because when your geopolitical ambitions fail, fungi will always appreciate dark, damp spaces.

During the Cold War, British military planners secretly loved the tunnel idea because it would give them a fixed target to defend. The French military hated it for exactly the same reason. This disagreement was settled the way all Franco-British disagreements are settled: with complicated paperwork and passive-aggressive memos.

Engineering That Defies Belief

The tunnel boring machines were so massive they had their own postal codes. Each machine weighed 1,200 tons and could dig 250 feet per week while lining the tunnel with concrete segments. Workers nicknamed them "Catherine" after Catherine of Aragon, who also connected England and Europe through marriage, though with less concrete.

The service tunnel between the two rail tunnels has a curious feature: it slopes slightly toward France. Any water leakage naturally flows to the French side, where they have better wine to console themselves about wet socks.

Fire safety involved building the world's largest indoor waterfall - a misting system that can dump 2,200 gallons per minute. They tested it by burning an entire train carriage inside the tunnel, which seems excessive until you remember you're 250 feet below the English Channel.

Versailles: Where Gold Leaf Was the Budget Option

Tourists navigating Versailles like salmon swimming upstream. The Hall of Mirrors had to use French-made glass because Venetian mirror makers kept getting assassinated. Louis XIV once held a dinner here where guests ate off solid gold plates that were thrown out the window afterward.

We tumbled out of Gare du Nord into a Parisian B&B that smelled of espresso and existentialism. The walk to Gare de l'Est takes about three minutes, which is just enough time to realize you're definitely in France because no one has smiled at you yet.

Gare de l'Est looking elegant while secretly handling more eastern European traffic than it admits. This station was the departure point for the Orient Express until 1977. During the Paris Commune, revolutionaries executed hostages against these very walls.

Gare Montparnasse is what happens when French architects discover concrete and decide to use ALL OF IT. The original station was demolished after a train crashed through the wall in 1895 - a dramatic exit even by French standards. The replacement is this brutalist wonder that looks like it's judging you for not wearing enough black.

Montparnasse's tower was Paris's tallest until the Eiffel Tower cheated by being mostly air. The station's art collection includes a Calder mobile that's been stolen twice and recovered once. Underground tunnels connect directly to the Catacombs, because why not?

We dug up a forgotten story about Gare Montparnasse from a 1930s Parisian railway workers' newsletter. Apparently, the station's original clock had a secret compartment where the station master would stash emergency brandy. During the 1910 Great Flood of Paris, when the Seine swallowed the tracks, he distributed it to stranded passengers. They turned a potential riot into a rather tipsy sing-along of La Marseillaise. The clock was replaced in the 1960s, but we like to think its spirit lives on in every delayed commuter's wistful glance.

The Versailles train is what Americans would call a "commuter rail" and what the French call "transport for peasants visiting kings." It's efficient, slightly worn at the edges, and smells vaguely of bread and disappointment.

The courtyard where Louis XIV once staged naval battles with actual boats and cannons. Versailles had Europe's first elevator - a hand-powered "flying chair" for Louis XV's mistress. The palace's 700 rooms required 2,000 servants, none of whom were allowed to run in the halls.

Versailles was basically a real-estate flex by Louis XIV, who moved the entire French court here because Paris was too... common. The palace cost approximately 2% of France's entire GDP annually during construction. To put that in perspective, that's like the US spending $400 billion today on a single house.

The gardens contain a secret: the Grand Canal is actually shaped like a cross when viewed from above. This wasn't religious symbolism but a surveying error they decided to keep because admitting mistakes wasn't the Sun King's style.

Our ridiculously detailed guide to the Palace of Versailles: Visiting the Palace of Versailles: A Complete Guide from Paris.

Louvre: The World's Largest Art Storage Unit

The name "Louvre" probably comes from the Latin "lupara" meaning wolf hunting ground, which explains why art critics can be so savage. Before becoming a museum, it was a fortress with a moat that's now the underground shopping area - because nothing says "appreciate Renaissance art" like buying a Mona Lisa keychain.

I.M. Pei's pyramid was originally going to be a sphere until someone pointed out it would look like a golf ball. The glass contains 675 diamond-shaped and 118 triangular panes, all perfectly cleanable by robotic window washers. Napoleon stored his looted art in these galleries, then had the nerve to call it "liberated."

The Louvre's Dirty Little Secrets

During the French Revolution, the Louvre became a museum mainly because revolutionaries needed somewhere to put all the art they'd confiscated from aristocrats. The first curator was a painter who appointed his mistress as head of restoration, which explains why some 18th-century nudes look suspiciously well-preserved.

The actual "louvres" that gave the museum its name - medieval window slats for arrow holes. These galleries once housed Napoleon III's private apartments, complete with a secret passage to the Tuileries. The marble floors contain fossils of ancient sea creatures, because even geology shows off in Paris.

The museum's most valuable item isn't the Mona Lisa but a 200-carat diamond called the "Regent" that's stored in a basement vault. It was smuggled out of India in a soldier's wound, which is either dedication to gemology or the worst infection risk in history.

Mona Lisa's Mysterious Grin

Da Vinci's famous painting was originally larger - it had columns on both sides that were cut off in the 18th century to fit a new frame. The subject might be Lisa del Giocondo, but some scholars think it's actually da Vinci's mother, which would make it the world's most expensive mother's day card.

The world's most famous painting behind bulletproof glass that could stop a tank. Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 by an Italian handyman who kept her under his bed for two years. Her eyes follow you because da Vinci used a technique called "sfumato" involving 30 layers of paint.

The Louvre's security system includes 2,400 motion detectors and 400 cameras, which is less about protecting art and more about making sure no one tries to steal the 380,000-pound Egyptian sarcophagus. During WWII, the museum secretly evacuated its entire collection to châteaux in the French countryside, with curators playing a real-life game of "hide the Mona Lisa."

A necessary break between Greek statues and Egyptian mummies. The benches in the Louvre are strategically placed to collapse after 20 minutes to keep traffic moving. Just kidding, but they might as well be - this place has more square footage than some European countries.

The Eiffel Tower: Paris's Temporary Iron Weed

The Paris Metro's RER C line to Champ de Mars is what happens when you take a perfectly good subway and make it intercity. It's like they couldn't decide between a metro and a train, so they built both in the same tunnel. The walk along Promenade d'Australie is lovely if you enjoy being passed by joggers who make you question your life choices.

The Seine pretending to be photogenic while hiding centuries of discarded bicycles. Promenade d'Australie is named after the French territory, not the continent, because Paris loves confusion. This stretch was originally marshland until Napoleon III's urban planner decided Paris needed more straight lines.

As we strolled along the Promenade d'Australie, we couldn't help but wonder about its name. It turns out that this stretch of land was once part of a massive military training ground called the Champ de Mars, which translates to "Field of Mars." In the 18th century, this area was used for military drills and public executions. But the real kicker is that the promenade is named after a French colony that never actually existed on the Australian continent. The French had a territory called "Australie" in the southern Indian Ocean, which they claimed in the 1770s. The colony was short-lived and eventually abandoned, but the name somehow ended up on this Parisian walkway. Talk about a geographical mix-up!

This entire neighborhood was once a swampy marshland that was drained and filled in the 19th century. The soil was so unstable that when they built the Eiffel Tower, they had to use innovative foundation techniques. The tower's four legs are anchored in concrete blocks that go down as deep as 15 meters, and they were built using compressed air caissons. The workers, many of whom were Italian immigrants, had to work in pressurized conditions that caused a mysterious illness known as "caisson disease." We can only imagine the headaches they had, and not just from the pressure.

Gustave Eiffel's "temporary" structure that's been up since 1889. The tower was originally going to be in Barcelona, but the city thought it was too ugly. Eiffel had a secret apartment at the top where he entertained Thomas Edison and other VIPs.

The Tower That Almost Wasn't

Gustave Eiffel didn't design the tower - his engineers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier did. Eiffel basically put his name on it like a college student signing a group project. The original design had more decorative arches that Eiffel stripped away, saying, "Let's not make it look like a fancy bridge to nowhere."

Construction used 2.5 million rivets installed by teams who worked without safety harnesses. Only one worker died, which for 19th-century ironwork was basically a safety miracle. The tower's paint weighs as much as 10 elephants and has to be reapplied every 7 years by daredevils with brushes.

Secret Uses and Strange Facts

During WWI, the tower's radio transmitter jammed German communications, effectively paying for its construction cost in military value alone. In WWII, French resistance fighters cut the elevator cables so Hitler would have to climb 1,665 steps if he wanted to plant a swastika flag. He didn't.

The tower grows 6 inches in summer heat and shrinks back in winter. It also leans away from the sun due to thermal expansion on one side - basically, it sunbathes at a slant. There's a secret laboratory at the top where Eiffel conducted atmospheric experiments, because why not?

Bastille Metro: Where Revolution Meets Graffiti

The Bastille station's street art is what happens when you give French artists a blank concrete canvas and tell them to commemorate a bloody revolution. It's like history class, but with better lighting and more tourists taking selfies with guillotine scenes.

Street art commemorating the revolution that invented modern protest signage. The murals were painted in 1989 for the bicentennial using pigments mixed with metro dust. Artists had to work between 1 AM and 5 AM when trains weren't running, fueled by espresso and revolution.

The station sits on the actual site of the Bastille prison's foundations. During construction in 1900, workers found chains and skeletons from the old dungeon, which were promptly donated to museums because nothing says "progress" like building a subway on human remains.

TGV Lyria: European train travel as Swiss-French Relationship Therapist

Our dash to Gare de Lyon involved what travel bloggers call "a leisurely stroll" and what normal people call "running while dragging luggage and swearing in two languages." The Starbucks delay was particularly French - they take coffee seriously here, even if it means missing your train to Switzerland.

TGV Lyria is basically marriage counseling for France and Switzerland: "You handle the trains, we'll handle the tunnels, and let's agree the Alps are pretty."

TGV Lyria looking Swiss-efficient and French-flashy simultaneously. The train's dual-voltage system switches between 25kV French and 15kV Swiss power without stopping. Zürich's platforms are so clean you could eat off them, but the Swiss would frown upon that.

The Train That Speaks Three Languages

TGV Lyria trains have to comply with four countries' safety regulations because they cross French, Swiss, German, and sometimes Italian territory. This means the emergency instructions are in more languages than a UN meeting, and the train's horn plays different notes depending on which country it's in.

The service almost failed in 2004 when the Swiss realized French trains were too wide for their tunnels. Solution? They rebuilt the tunnels. Because when you're Switzerland and you want French trains, you just move mountains. Literally.

The same train looking decidedly more Parisian hours earlier. Gare de Lyon's clock tower contains a secret apartment where the station master lived until 1984. The train's first-class seats are wider than economy airplane seats, which is either generous or an insult to aviation.

Technology That Borders on Magic

TGV Lyria's tilting mechanism allows it to take curves 20% faster than regular trains. The system uses gyroscopes and accelerometers to lean into turns like a motorcycle, except with 400 passengers and a dining car. The train's power system switches between AC and DC voltages automatically, which is the electrical equivalent of changing shoes while running.

The dining car serves Swiss chocolate and French wine in a delicate diplomatic balance. Ordering German beer would probably cause the train to stop and ask you to reconsider your life choices.

Next up: We trade European train travel for mountain roads as we explore Switzerland, Germany, and France by car, because apparently we decided that after sitting on trains for days, what we really needed was to drive ourselves. The adventure continues at "Switzerland, France, and Germany: A Tri-Country Adventure in the Heart of Europe".