This really made me want to take a trip to see my dad. My father lives ~600km away from me; whenever I go visit, I tend to stay for a weekend so I don't miss work and I have the choice between driving, train or plane. I take the train most of the time, my friends and family give me a hard time for it all the time because it's more expensive and takes a longer time.
# Driving / bus ($)
We have horrible roads, terrible drivers and it would take me around 7.5 - 8 hours to do this. The bus needs to stop for toilet breaks, in multiple cities so it's probably a cramped 9.5-hour road. Also driving myself, leaving Friday after work would render me useless the next day and then Sunday I'd have to come back.
# Train ($$$)
Leaves Friday at ~20:30 (8:30PM) and arrives Saturday morning at ~07:00. That's 10 hours of journey BUT, I go to the train station at around 20:00, I eat something, usually get a bottle of wine and hop on the train.
There, I usually get a single cabin ( also went with 2 people in the cabin, with 4 people and even with 6! just for the adventure ) with a private shower and toilet inside. I take a quick shower because I usually go straight from work, I then kinda chill and enjoy the landscape, open up the wine, start reading a good book and really by midnight, the gentle rocking of the train and the moonlit mountains knock me out. Maybe the wine also.
In the morning, a knock on my door usually 30 min before arriving at the station, it's the steward bringing me a sandwich, coffee/tea, and water and letting me know we're about to arrive. From there, I walk to my dad's house (it's around a 15-minute walk) and there I am ready to hang out Saturday the whole day and Sunday up until ~20:30 again when I leave for home.
In the morning, I take a shower, eat breakfast at the train station and head off to work.
# Plane ($$)
If I don't go to work Friday and Monday, I choose this option, alas I don't like wasting two days of vacation for a two-day weekend stay so I rarely do this. If I go I either go for a full week or just the weekend.
So, the plane leaves Saturday at 06:45... that means I need to be at the airport at 5:30, which means I need to leave my house at 04:00. This means that Friday, I get home, pack and of course try to sleep until around 03:00 and can't and when I finally sleep the alarm goes off.
I usually get an overpriced bottle of water and because the distance is so small, I can't really get any good sleep so it's around an hour cramped up trying to somehow sleep. After this wonderful time, I arrive but wait, my father lives in another city with no airport, so the closest airport is 90 minutes driving. He needs to also wake up on a Saturday at 06:00 to come to pick me up.
Once I get there, it's all fine and nice, we talk and laugh but when I get home I can't help crashing. That means I wake up somewhere afternoon, groggy and go eat something with my dad and catch up. Then I usually get tired in the evening and I kinda need to go catch some shut-eye because Sunday morning at 06:45 the plane flies back home. This time I sleep no problem, but we still need to wake up early as hell, and then I get worried for my dad when he drives back.
Note that in this case, the plane is cheaper than the train, it's because I usually go in a single cabin luxury 1st class (lol, it's really not as fancy as it sounds, here are three pictures from the last time I went[0]).
Paying a grand total of ~110€ vs the cheaper ~30€ flight to get there and back and spending more time on the road might seem dumb, but I think, in this case, it's really worth it. The cheapest way to get there and back by train, in a sleeping cart is also around 30€.
[0] https://imgur.com/a/dquwwJF - note the two beds, that's the double cabin. What they do when you get a single, you still get the double beds, but no bunkmate :(