Hello,
I'm traveling to France in June. I'll be traveling from CDG Airport to Paris when I arrive. I'm wondering if I can use my Eurail France Pass on the RER to Paris? Also, does the Eurail France Pass only cover the TGV trains or the other trains as well.
Also, are the Eurail passes refundable if the trains strike?
Thanks!
Sherri
A Eurail pass is almost always a very bad purchase -- it has been obsolete for years. You need reservations for the TGV and those often cost as much as buying a ticket early before travel and trains may have limited availablility for pass holders. It isn't like in the 60s when you could just hop on a train.
And no they are not good for local transport like the metro or RER just for intercity trains.
There are situations were a Eurail pass makes sense, but France is not the most pass friendly country as you'll need a seat reservation for the TGVs so there is not as much flexibility like say Germany.
You might be able to use a Eurail pass from CDG to Gare du Nord, but is that cost-effective? The cost for a ticket from CDG is 11.45 to include any required metro connection to your destination. The Eurorail pass only takes you to Gare du Nord, from there you will have additional expense to reach your destination.
Train tickets are no longer so expensive that passes make financial sense. Using passes for TGV travel requires a reservation that can cost almost as much as a ticket, and reservations for pass holders are very limited.
You'll need to ask from whomever you purchase a pass about their being refundable. I would ask for a refund before you ever attempt to use it.
I’ll be traveling back and forth from Paris to Avignon 4 times on the TVG. I thought it made sense for me to buy the pass. I’m sorry I was not clear about this in my first email. I also wanted to know if the pass could be used on other trains as well. I had seen something about asking for camarque at CDG. However, it sounds like seats for pass holders are very limited, and I might not be able to reserve a seat for all of my trips. Is that what you all are saying?
Consult that Man in Seat 61
You know you are making 4 trips and it seems like you know the days. Buy tickets now, that are nonrefundable to get the best price. Even though the tickets are "nonrefundable", you do get a refund if the trains don't run due to a strike. Might not be the case with a Eurail Pass.
Seats for June have been on sale for a while. You should reserve or buy ticketsnow.
FYI, the Eurail website can't handle TGV 20 euro seat reservations (there apparently are very few 10 euro TGV seat reservations that is can handle, and these sell out quickly). When trying to purchase from shopping cart, during the verification step, the following error occurs:
"One of the legs of your journey could not be booked
One of the legs of your journey is not available anymore. Please try searching for another connection"
The work around is to purchase the seat reservations from https://travel.b-europe.com/, BUT you need a eurail "pass cover number" to do this. This "pass cover number" is obtained from https://www.eurail.com/en/book-reservations#/generatePassCoverNumber.
This has really been painful, but our 10 trip second class eurail pass will have more than paid for itself after our first four trips (London to France to Germany over 2 weeks).
