Rail Passes - one month

A couple of questions first please.

The Eurostar south of France service from London is only from May through September so not running in March.

You must be making a connection in Paris or Lille? Have you already got your Eurostar tickets? Is that for the same day you are landing at Heathrow? How much time is there between arrival at Heathrow and departure from St Pancras International?

If you haven't yet got tickets to cross the Channel have you considered flying? There are cheap short flights from Heathrow to Nice and Marseilles.

The Cote d'Azur is a large area, with which I am quite familiar. Where are you basing? The answer may show how far and how complicated getting to the trains is likely to be. Will you have access to a car?

Thanks for more details....

I agree it is possibly cheaper to fly. Also a rail pass you do not necessarily need it after you set out in order your itinerary.

Paris is a 6 hour train ride from Nice even on a TGV. If you do go, at least one way, on the Eurostar, it would be best to get your Paris visit done on the way to or from Cote d'Azur.

SNCF does have a senior discount rail card for 60 EUR per person. It is good for a whole year, but it could pay for itself if you take a lot of rail journeys. 25% discount, and it includes discounted advance tickets, IC and TER trains.
https://en.oui.sncf/en/discount-cards/carte-senior

The Carte Senior+ might be your best deal. France also offers some senior ticket discounts without buying the card. These are generally for off-peak times and not on the TGV or the Eurostar (the contradictory info on that link is old).

Any mathematic comparison you want to do becomes easier the more trip details you can lay out. The Eurail France pass covers a maximum of 8 travel days within a month, so you'd use it only for the 8 longest days, if you buy one. Regularly priced at about $315 per person in 2nd class, for two traveling together, or $390 in 1st, or 20% off if purchased before Dec. 30. It is valid on Eurostar, together with a seat reservation fee of $23 or $35, depending on class of service. If you were continuing on by train the same day, any TGV/Oui train would need a separate seat reservation, but regional trains do not.

France is the country with sometimes-restrictive quotas of reservations for rail pass holders. It is possible to buy the pass, select a train with plenty of open seats, but be unable to get a reservation because all the passholder reservations have been sold. When comparing prices, remember that the selling price shown for a ticket on a train that requires reservations will already include the reservation fee; it will not be an extra expense as it is if you are traveling on a rail pass.

There are a lot of trains in France (all the TERs, at least) that do not require reservations, but they tend to be less costly than the per-day price you'll be paying for the rail pass. So it's important to have a pretty good idea of what your travel legs will look like before deciding to buy a pass. Most trips along the Riviera are low-cost TERs. Getting from London to Paris, from Paris to and from the Riviera, and from Paris to and from Grenoble will be among your longer trips.

Thank you for all the input. Still considering if $411.00 Can .....would 3 longer trips say to Greenoble, Paris and the border of Spain make it worthwhile?

Pay attention to what acraven is saying. Many of the most useful trains in France run out of reservations for passholders in an instant -- so then you're stuck holding a pass that won't get you a seat on the train that you want to take. Or, if you're lucky, there IS a space that you can reserve -- but remember that in that case, you still need to pay the reservation fee on top of what you paid for the rail pass.

Honestly, France is one of the places where a rail pass makes the least sense of all.

Still not following this very well. Are you spending the month in Cote d'Azur (I'll just say Nice for the time being) and taking 3 long day trips? Nice to Paris is at least 6 hours on a train, Nice to Grenoble is 6 hours, Nice to Perpignan (near the Spanish border) is 7 hours. These are not day trips. They need at least a day or two in each, so you would then need a 6 day pass.

If you will visit consecutively, say London-Paris-Grenoble-Perpignan-Nice, it is possible to use a 3 day pass if you get the Eurostar separately and fly back to London from Nice. You do have extra reservation fees, and the possibility of getting locked out of a train. Perhaps not likely in March, or if you don't mind perhaps having to wait for the next available train.

We are staying in Eze for the month of March. If we purchased a 8 day Eurorail pass would we encounter difficulties being bumped from the trains of our choice or is this a low travel month?
We are thinking of overnighter to Paris, Grenoble and along the coast of France to Spanish border.
Thank you.

I guess if you are sold on getting a rail pass, might as well. You probably would not have any issues as March is low season, and you won't get "bumped" off a train. They simply will not give you a reservation, then tell you what trains they can get you on. So it behooves you to reserve as soon as you make a decision on what you are doing. Once you have your reservation, you're good to go.

Thank you for all your suggestions. Bought 2 Eurail passes for 8days for $411 1st class. Looking forward to seeing Cote de Zur and further afield during our month is France.

Since we are landing in Heathrow where can we find cheap flights to Nice?

Hi,

I've used 1st class rail passes in France, though not any more, but they do have advantages pertaining to train riding in France. If you're route is not valid for pass holders, ie the pass holder quota having been met for 1st class, ask about 2nd class. Unless in both classes the quota is met for that specific departure time, (very unlikely), which in all train travel on the TGV on a Pass I have never come across, you don't have to choose another departure time.

I've never had to change the departure time let alone the date of departure due to the Pass quota, only changed the class, and I always did this almost literally last minute, ie, a couple hours prior to the time of departure I wanted or the night before. This was always during peak season, ie, traveling in June/July. So, if you are told the pass quota for dep time xyz from A to B is filled, no big deal, certainly no important obstacle. With the 1st class Pass, ask about 2nd class, for which your 1st class Pass is also valid.

It may not be busy season for foreign tourists, but residents are the main users of the trains and they have lots of reasons to travel the main rail lines. The last week of March is Holy Week, so I would reserve TGV trains a few weeks ahead for that period. The quotas are not as restrictive as they used to be, but I did receive a complaint last spring from a gentleman trying to book pass holder reservations as he went, three days ahead at train stations in France and Spain, during the Easter holidays. He got about half of them, including the Paris-Barcelona direction, but not his Barcelona-Paris return and another leg within Spain.