Earlier this year, I did a last-minute trip to mainland Europe and I ended up using two sleeper trains: Rome-Vienna and Vienna-Amsterdam. I slept like a baby on both, and I can't being to explain the magic of lying in bed peeking through a blind at the countryside passing by outside, the strange shifts in gravity as the train rounds corners on mountain passes, and waking up in a new country, stepping out of your bedroom into the very centre of a thriving city. The costs were about €100 each, which isn't much more than a cheap hotel room.

I cannot recommend them enough.