Greetings,
I'm probably a little behind the 8 ball with getting train tickets but for some reason I'm unclear about what a Eurail Select Pass includes. I'll be traveling from August 13 - 25 mostly in France with a stop in Switzerland. I need to take a train 5 times over the course of my vacation. If I get the "4 days within 2 months" option, will that cover what I need? Or would I be better with point to point tickets?
Thanks,
Austen
No one can answer that question for sure without a more detailed itinerary, but in general, as long as you can commit to advance purchase for specific trains, you will probably spend less for discounted point-point tickets than you will with a rail pass.
First, look at the price of discounted, advance purchase, point-point tickets from the railroad involved - French or Swiss Rail, not a third party seller like RailEurope, or one of Rick's "handy" time and fare maps. Next, take into account the "passholder reservation price" to use premium French trains, like the TGV. This is really a surcharge on top of the price of the rail pass and adds to the cost of getting from point A to point B with a pass. Also, these passholder reservations are limited, and often a holder of a rail pass cannot just use it on his train of choice. The supposed freedom of a rail pass is negated by the necessity of finding trains that still have passholder reservations available.
That helps. I'm not sure if I can commit to specific trains because I'd like flexibility. The thing I'm confused about is the "4 days within 2 months" option. What exactly does that mean? If I take a train ride that lasts 90 minutes on one day, does that count as one of the 4 days in the option?
Hi,
Keep in mind that if you commit to a specific date and time of departure, you've basically locked yourself in in order to get the savings. It is matter of which takes precedence...savings or flexibility. For some it's saving on the expenses, for others the expenses are of lesser importance, or irrelevant. I use both: the point to point tickets, plus the discounted 92 day prior to departure to get the max savings, ie the cheapest ticket offered. Of course, I've sacrificed any sort flexibility on the route. Also, I use a rail Pass but no longer in France.
I myself would not get the 4 days/2 month Pass, not my style.
Part 2 here.
If your ride is 90 minutes on the TGV on one day, and that is all the train riding for that particular day, yes, day 1 out of the 4 days is used up. Now, let's say, you take the TGV at 0900, arrive at 1030, then at 1300 you want to take a regional train to town X for a day trip, returning a few hours later, all that is considered day 1.
Afterwards your pass has 3 days left. I've done numerous times in Germany, say, go from Berlin to Kiel, check in, then two hours later, take the regional train for a day trip to Schleswig, returning a few hours later to Kiel. .
A four day pass would have places to fill in four calendar days. You can use the pass for unlimited travel on any day that is filled in. So if you use it for 90 minutes in the morning, you can still use it for any travel you want in the afternoon. Or, you can make one long trip from one end of France starting in the morning to the other ending before midnight that night, or you could make 15 half hour trips all day long. It's for that day.
It used to be that to accommodate using a night train that started one evening and ended the following morning without using 2 days of your pass, night trains that started after 7 pm in the evening and reached their final destination after 4 am the next morning only required using the second day of the pass, but, with the loss of most night trains, that is hardly relevant today.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Europeans make numbers slightly different than ours. For instance, a European 'one' looks like a droopy seven, while they make a seven with a crossbar. Apparently someone once filled in the date, which was the 7th, with an American 7, and the conductor claimed it was from the 1st, and they had to use another pass day for that day.
Austen,
Lee and Fred have given you excellent advice.
You may also be interested in this invaluable source of information about train travel: seat61.com/ France-trains
Have a wonderful trip!
Related to Lee's excellent advice about European numbers, be careful with European date format -- write dates on forms as dd/mm/year, NOT the American month/day/year. (The international bank where I used to work only allowed entries into the computer system as day in numbers/ month in letters (7 JUN) to avoid confusion between 06/07 and 07/06)
Impossible to answer this question if one must guess the types of trains and city pairs you are using. TGV reservation fees for pass holders can cost more than a PREM ticket and be very difficult to obtain. TGV seats available to pass holders can be very limited. Many TER trains are so inexpensive the using a pass to ride them is financially wasteful.
Generally, no matter the option selected, flexibility costs money and trains near the end of August fill up early.
