France Transportation Mystery

Look at Rome2Rio.com and you will see there is a TGV (high speed train) Paris to Annecy. No need for a pass, book asap for the best price. And breathe......

Give us the dates and we will guide you.
1. There is something called a Navigo Semaine that runs from Monday morning to Sunday night and cost 22.15 EUR plus a 5 EUR first time set up fee. Bring a 1" by 1 1/4" passport photo with. That will cover all trains, Metro (subway), buses in the entire Paris region, all 5 zones including the airports. There are other options if your visit spans a weekend. Let us know your dates. Railpasses don't work for Paris transit. Whole separate animal.
2. Just buy tickets to Annecy and back. If you know your exact dates, you can buy the tickets now and print them out at home, but you must travel on the exact trains on the tickets. They work just like airline tickets. Otherwise you can just go to the station and buy full fare tickets for the next train. Again, what are your dates?

The horse's mouth for French rail info is the SNCF website. I don't know what date you plan to go to Annecy, so I randomly chose Tuesday, March 14. I just checked the one-way fare, though I guess you'll need a round-trip.

It appears that fares can go up to 147 euros one-way, if not higher, but for March 14 I see a 52-euro fare on one train and others beneath 80 euros. If your travel date to (and from?) Annecy is locked down, it looks as if you can save quite a bit of money by buying the Annecy tickets now. The best prices are for non-refundable tickets or those with restrictions.

Note that even if you had a railpass, you would still have to pay for seat reservations (the cost of which is included in the fares shown on that SNCF webpage I've linked to), and SNCF has the nefarious policy of restricting the number of seat reservations available to rail-pass holders. It's possible that you might see tickets available for a particular train but not be able to buy seat reservations for it if you had a rail pass.

I don't think a French rail pass would help at all on the Metro or on city buses. I'm not sure about using it on the RER trains.

Don't panic. You are going to have a great trip!

It does sound as though you could use a good guidebook, however, one that answers these logistical questions.

Zone 5 is well outside of Paris. If you plan to travel into the city every day, it won't take too many trips for a weekly Navigo pass, which cover zones 1-5, to pay for itself, though there are some one-time charges and you will need a passport-style photo for the pass.

However, the pass is on a fixed cycle that begins on Monday, so if you are only staying for a few days and your time straddles the weekend it may not be the best value. You will need to buy individual RER tickets; metro tickets can be bought in carnets of 10 at a discount, but they are only good inside Paris, though they include RER trains in paris only.

The Navigo is not the rail pass, and you are better off just buying a ticket if your only trip is to Annecy and back. The train is already pretty foolproof, but if it will ease your mind and help you to enjoy your trip I am sure a travel agent could answer your questions. If you have questions when you are in France, you can ask them of an agent at any train station or at an SNCF boutique. The latter is an office of the national railway system for customers where agents can answer questions and sell tickets.

A good guidebook wil also answer many of your questions.

you should satisfy yourself to ease your mind, but it is possible to overthink this. For all of these services the basic principle is that you go to the station, buy a ticket, and go. And going is the important thing, right?

Thank you so much for the quick responses, clears up a couple of major questions I had lingering! Sigh.... and I took the advice to breathe, lol. Our dates are March 9-17. I'll take a look at the train dates mentioned and see if I can go ahead and grab those and book that separately now. I am glad to know finally that the trains between cities differ entirely from the Paris transportation, big help! If I run into additional questions I know where to find awesome people willing to help. Big thank you!

I agree Just by individual tickets. passes are over rated or stated when it comes to travel in Europe. I've been 8 times to France and traveled all over by rail without some pass.

I am seeing prices of 52 EUR per person each way, leaving March 14 at 10:41 and returning on March 16 at 18:31, giving 2 full days and nights in Annecy, If that is what you are looking for.

If you are going to Paris why are you not staying in Paris. zone 5 is the edge of the Ile de France well outside Paris. All of Paris is zone 1. Transportation in Paris is dead easy. If you are there much of a calendar week Mon-Sun, get a Navigo Decouverte and charge it with a weekly pass (semaine) If you lap over the weekend, then buy a carnet of ordinary tickets for Paris for 14.50 for 10 and buy more if you run out. A rail pass is obsolete; it is a very rare trip where they would make sense and certainly not a single trip to Annecy. You have missed cheap tickets. A Eurail pass does not cover local transportation. The metro is everywhere in Paris (and laps over the border here or there on the same ticket) and easy to use. pick up a free map the first time you ride.

Pick up a guidebook and read it on the plane

christina,

I'd highly recommend that you pack along a copy of either the RS Paris or RS France guidebooks, as the books have a lot of good information which will answer a lot of your questions you've asked (and allow you to breath). If you can't find one in your local bookstores and will be travelling with an iPad or other device, it's possible to download an E-book version at very reasonable cost. The Kindle edition of RS Paris is currently priced at $11.60 on Amazon.

You might also want to have a look at http://parisbytrain.com/ as there's a lot of great information there too.

If you could clarify the area you're staying in, it would be easier for the group to provide more specific details.

Just a note that for the Passe Navigo, it doesn't have to be a real (expensive) passport picture. I know (and have read here on the Forum many times) of people printing out the right-sized picture on their computer and cutting it up. So don't let the need to get photobooth photos turn you off from getting the pass.

The person talking about individual tickets vs. passes above was talking about the inter-city rail between Paris and Annecy (which are hours and hours apart) rather than the passes for public transportation in and around Paris.

We do need to know where you're staying -- whether it's Zone 5, which is far from central Paris, or the 5th arrondissement/district, which is the heart of Paris.

Also, the advice to read either RS Paris or RS France, both of which will cover this kind of basic information, is spot on. now THAT would be worth having overnighted to your house. I can't imagine trying to travel abroad without having a basic tool like a guidebook to prepare me! They don't talk just about sights and what to see, and hotels and where to stay, but exactly about these kind of transportation issues etc. Rick and his writing staff have been explaining this stuff professionally, clearly, and concisely to travelers for decades now -- they wouldn't still be in business if they gave confusing information! Really, invest 20 or 25 dollars or whatever it is in one of his books. Your panic will subside. (No I am not paid by Rick Steves nor have I ever traveled with him, or ever seen him or met him.)

The Paris Metro app is super-duper helpful. It's not just a map of the Metro. Like GoogleMaps, you can type in from-to Metro stops and it will give you the line(s) and direction to take, where to make a change, if any, estimated transit time, etc.

Good morning all! We are staying right near Disney and decided to keep the place the entire trip as it was free. We talked about staying other areas as well but we are keeping the free hotel as a home base so we could travel light should we decide to spend a night or two or three elsewhere. We will probably end up only visiting Disney only 1 day so it's only a very small part of the trip. Our kids have a mission to visit all the Disney parks in the world. They grew up on Disney and just love it so I was obliged to let them go to the park if even just one day. At least our free accommodations were convenient to something.
I did download the RS book on my kindle and read as much as I could last night. I'm picking back up on it today. Thank you all!

The passé navigo covers zones 1-5 so it will get you from Disney to any of the 5 zones around Paris , the airport , Versailles, subways , busses , etc.

Wasting two hours a day commuting is a very expensive use of your time. There is no real choice besides either an ND rail pass if it fits your time, or even the ridiculously overpriced Paris Visite if you are going to be commuting to Paris every day from that distance.