We're buying a rail pass for our trip to France/Italy. Does this mean we can get on any train at any time? Do we still have to make reservations? What do we do if we want to reserve a couchette?
Posted by
Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
The Rick Steve's information linked by Kent above is really good. To add info for Italy, the reservation fee on top of your pass for Eurostar trains is 18Euro. It's zero for the regionale trains and 3Euro for seat reservations on the ICPlus trains. In France, you will find reservations fees on top of your basic pass fare for the TGV (3Euro), TEOZ (3Euro) and Corail/Corail IC (1.50Euro) trains.
Posted by
US Pacific Northwest
10344 posts
Go to this link: How Railpasses Work it's another tab on this Website and you'll see the links "How Railpasses Work", I think all of your questions that you've asked are answered there. If you read that info and have more questions, come on back.
Posted by
Northern VA, VA, USA
121 posts
Kristin -
My family and I just spent 3.5 weeks traveling on trains in five EU countries...you will love it! The ease of travel is awesome. You can verify if you need a reservation or not by looking at the train schedule information. We made advance reservations only for overnights and long trips (Venice to Rome)we needed to schedule. Otherwise we simply paid the reservation immediately prior to boarding the train and once we got on a train without and simply paid the conductor. Have fun!
Posted by
burlington
427 posts
only on ec ,ic , and regional trains. all others require reservations. most trains in germany and austria dont.