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Railpass Question

Posted by (Indianapolis) on

I'm going on a trip to France, Switzerland, and Italy with my girlfriend. We are both over 26 so it sounds like we will need to get 1st class passes. We will be traveling by train for 4 days.

I added up the cost of buying individual tickets with reserved seats and it came out to $922. I compared that with buying a Select Pass for 5 days across 3 countries and it came out to $770 which is cheaper. My questions are the following:

1)With the Select Pass are you able to reserve your seats? I thought maybe you needed to reserve them through this page (http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/point_to_point/passholderrequest.htm) but then with the additional reservation fees, the Select Pass ended up being more money than just buying individual tickets.

2)Also on that Buy a Reservation page it only listed 2nd class tickets. There weren't any 1st class listed.

Thanks for your help!

Posted by
10 posts

2)The website I was looking at that only displayed 2nd class tickets when making Euro Select reservations was RailEurope.com. I would get 2nd class tickets to save money but I thought there was an age restriction. Like I mentioned in my original post my girlfriend and I are both 30, so I thought we didn't qualify. Thanks!

Posted by
4132 posts

Jon: There's no age restriction for 2nd class tickets, just for the pass.

Do not buy tickets from Rail Europe however, they mark up their prices to make the passes look like a better deal than they are. (Also they do not list all the trains.)

If you do buy a pass, a 1st-class pass is good in 2nd class too.

But I suspect you can save a bundle with plain train tickets, even if you buy them all in Paris.

Good luck!

Posted by
446 posts

Do not buy anything from RailEurope. They are just a USA agency for European railways and there is a big markup on their tickets and passes.

Because of the Euro's recent slide, you can save big money on passes now if you buy them from eurail.com and pay IN EUROS (the amount is converted to Dollars on your credit card).

For example, at eurail.com, the price for a 5-day adult Select Pass is 324 Euros, but $455 if you pay in Dollars. 324 Euros is currently about $400. You save over $50 by paying the Euro price.

Posted by
10 posts

If we buy the select pass now and then buy tickets once we are in Europe, is it likely that the actual tickets will be sold out? Did trains usually sell out or does this not usually happen? We will be in Europe the first 2 weeks in September if that makes a difference. Thanks!

Posted by
4132 posts

Jon, if you buy a pass now you won't need to buy tickets later.

You might need reservations on some routes. Usually this is not a problem if you are flexible, e.g. if you can take the next train. Night trains can fill up well in advance.

However, for passholders there is a limited pool of reservations available (another argument against the pass). I've never bumped into it but others here have reported being unable to get reservations with their passes.

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