The Park Outside, Train In Strategy

Planning a city stop on your next road trip? Don’t drive into the city but instead take the train for an easier time and many more benefits.

The Park outside, Train In Strategy and it’s background

The first few times we tried visiting cities on our road trips we did what most people do—we drove straight into them.

It usually ended the same way. Heavy traffic, expensive parking, unfamiliar road layouts, and everyone arriving already tired before we’d even started exploring.

Then we tried something different.

We parked outside the city and caught the train in.

It was one of those travel changes that seemed almost too simple, but we’ve repeated it across Europe ever since.

If you’re planning a road trip, especially with children or anyone who finds busy places overwhelming, this tip can help you too.

The Park Outside, Train In Strategy at a glance

🚗 Drive
↓
🏡 Park in a quiet town outside the city
↓
🚆 Take a 30–60 minute train to the city
↓
🏙️ Explore the city
↓
🚆 Return when ready
↓
😌 Relax

Why this works

Most people who work in the city cannot afford to live there, or don’t want to live a full city life.

As a result, you have the development of commuter belt areas outside of the city.

These commuter areas are often quieter, have more space, don’t incur emission charges to drive in, and crucially have great train (and tram) links to the city. 

As a result, these places make an excellent safe base from which you can visit the big city.

The benefits of this Strategy

Here are the benefits of this approach.

Less Stress

  • No emissions rules to understand and apply
  • No complicated one way systems
  • No city traffic to navigate
  • Provides a break from driving

It Can Save money

  • Cheaper parking 
  • No congestion charges
  • Cheaper accommodation options

Better for Neurodiverse families

  • Quieter accommodation
  • Time and space to regulate
  • Tiem together on the train for games and fun
  • You can leave whenever you want

That last point is one of the biggest benefits of this strategy.

If everyone is having a wonderful day you can stay until the evening.

If someone becomes overwhelmed after lunch, you simply catch the next train back.

That flexibility removes a surprising amount of pressure because nobody feels they have to “make the most” of an expensive city hotel or long drive.

How to Guide To This Strategy

Here is how to use this approach for your next road trip.

  1. Pick the city.
  2. Find towns 20–60 minutes away by train.
  3. Check they’re outside any emission zones.
  4. Read the station prking reviews to ensure it is safe.
  5. Book accommodation (if staying overnight).
  6. Enjoy the city without driving through it.

The best way to do this is by using Google Maps – or similar tools – and then either a search engine or AI assistant to help check for emission zones.

Check the arrival station

One further check to make when applying this route is to double check that the station you will arrive at in the city is within walking distance to the attractions you like or on a main pubic transport routes e.g. for local trams, buses or underground.

The challenges with this approach

We recognise that while this is a good option for a road trip, it isn’t without its challenges.

Therefore, you should consider these when applying this approach and take the steps required for managing those challenges. 

Public transport and trains can be overwhelming

You may want to investigate when peak travel times are, and plan your journey to avoid these times to avoid overwhelm from crowded spaces.

You may also want to prepare yourself or others for the potential sensory challenges with a train such as smells and noise. 

Trains can be cancelled or delayed

It won’t hurt to have an alternative option or two in the case of a train being cancelled or delayed.

Alternatives can be taking a bus, coach or taxi. 

Tip: Use the local train apps and websites to plan and monitor your journey options. These will be the most up to date and will almost always have options to change the language to english. 

Examples from our own travels

Here are some examples where this approach has worked really well for us on our travels.

Hopefully, they will encourage you to give it a try. 

Visiting Milan – We stayed in Varese

Not only did Varese provide us with a large apartment, free parking, and a picturesque hour-long train journey to Milan.

It also provided us with some of the best pizza we had in Italy when we discovered a little pizzeria a short distance from our apartment. 

Here is a google map extract to show the option we took for visiting Milan by train from Varese.

Visiting Luxembourg for the day – We stayed in a motel 

We visited Luxembourg during our road trip to Tuscany.

When doing this leg we opted for a cost effective motel to stay in the night before our visit.

This motel was just outside Luxembourg central and provided an easy option for the night at a low cost. 

The next morning we headed to a park and ride area outside of the main city and jumped on probably the cleanest tram we have ever taken, and quickly found ourselves in the centre Luxembourg City. 

Once there, we had a great time taking in the sights, grabbing a hot chocolate at the famous Chocolate House, and enjoying a picnic lunch in the park by the glass elevator and old Luxembourg. 

Once done, we jumped back on the tram to our park and were back in our car and on the road within 45 minutes. 

Tip: Public transport in Luxembourg is free.

Not Visiting Pisa – We opted not to do this as the reviews for the car parks weren’t good 

While enjoying some sunshine and pool time in our Eurocamp stay in Tuscany we toyed with the idea of a day trip to Pisa as it wasn’t too far away. 

We looked to follow the approach in this post and looked for good train links and parking. 

We found a good option location wise but when we checked the reviews of the car park they all pointed to major security issues with the car park.  

While we were keen to see Pisa and the leaning tower we weren’t keen on the stress or overhead of a damaged car, or stolen items, so we decided against that visit and we felt this was the right thing to do.

Even if nothing happened to our car we would have been worried for the duration of our visit, and Pisa didn’t offer us much to see or do other than look at the tower.

Therefore, we felt the stress-risk versus reward for Pisa wasn’t high enough in favour of reward for us to take the risk.

This isn’t a replacement for City Breaks

This approach doesn’t replace city breaks, they still have there place and we have had some great adventures visiting cities like Copenhagen.

What it is for, are road trips and similar adventures where you will be visiting one more cities as part of that trip.

In Summary

If you’re on a family road trip, where the city is just one stop along the journey, we’ve found this approach makes travelling calmer, cheaper and much more enjoyable.

We’ve used it across the UK and Europe and now it’s one of the first things we plan whenever a road trip includes a city.

We hope that you found this tip useful and give it a try.

If you do, please let us know how you get on. You can do this by joining the Travelbetter community below and hitting reply to the welcome email.