I would like to take a train ride to Paris from Carcassone (after driving many days in the countryside). Has anyone done this? What are the best options? I've also read that if I put that I'm from Canada/Great Britain I get a better discount on the tickets, is this true? We will then spend the next 5 days or so in Paris for the end of our trip.
Posted by
London, United Kingdom
4684 posts
The alternate routes are via either Toulouse or Narbonne. Personally, I think the Narbonne route will be more scenic, as it passes close to the coast for a while, but see which is best in terms of time and fare.
In the past, the SNCF website redirected Americans to a different site which was heavily devoted to selling rail passes and only offered a limited set of overpriced point-to-point tickets. This is now better than it was, but another option is to use the new Capitaine Train third-party booking site, which doesn't have a mark-up and doesn't care where you are geographically.
Posted by
Boston
4132 posts
The trip is so long, and there are so many great things to see between one and the other. I wonder if your itinerary includes some of those things.
If so, you might think about reordering your itinerary to be someplace closer to Paris than Carcassone when you are ready to go to Paris.
Maybe not--I don't know your itinerary, of course. In which case the train is a good choice.
Posted by
L'Occitanie, France
10621 posts
We've taken the train to Carcassonne from Paris, picked up a car and dropped it elsewhere. A couple of things to note while making your plans. There is no car rental at the train station. You would have to drop your car at the airport outside town and take a taxi back to the station in the center of town. Second, no matter what you have to change somewhere from a regional train to a high speed train to get from Carcassonne to Paris. Therefore, you may want to think of driving directly to a high speed train station where you can find a car rental agency in Toulouse or Montpelier to drop the car and get a direct train there. Finally, although Carcassonne has an airport, it has no carrier flying to Paris. The flights go to Great Britian and Scandinavia, etc.
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16895 posts
Rick’s France rail travel page has the link and tips for buying “Prems” rate TGV tickets through SNCF (cheap, reserved, nonrefundable, available three or four months ahead of your travel date) to print at home and pay with PayPal. It does not tend to work with US credit cards, unless you have an extra level of security set up. Once the Prems/PayPal rate is sold out, people with most US credit cards have to turn to other sites, like Capitaine Train.