Trenitalia vs. Rail europe

This is probably not the place to ask; however, my husband and I will be taking the train from London to Paris and then the next day from Paris to Nice (where we are flying in and out of since our daughter has been studying there). Should we use Rail Europe for those tickets or is there another site that is better?

Trenitalia has started taking North American credit cards so you should try to book through them. They are the official train system in Italy. Rail europe is a reseller and tacks on fees, doesn't show all the available trains and doesn't mention the fact that you must pay an additional seat reservation fee when booking tickets. Check out the trenitalia site but remember they are due for a schedule change on June 12th so you will find limited information on trains after that date. Just use dates before that to see what the schedules will look like and how many trains a day go to the destinations you're interested in. The schedules won't change much. Any schedules listed after the 12th by rail europe is just a guess on their part. Donna

Thank you very much for this valuable information! we are traveling before the June date, so should be good. I will check; however, are you familar as to if they mail the tickets here to the states or will we need to pick them up once we arrive in Europe? I have compared rail pass vs. point to point and have found that p2p is best in our case, but will calculate again on this website and see if that is still the case. Again many thanks for your information.

You get a confirmation number so you won't need to pick up tickets. You can print out the confirmation or just write down the number and give it to the conductor when he asks for it. Donna

Just one -- money !!! Rail Europe is NOT a real road company. It is a travel agency that sells marked up and limited selection of tickets to North Americans. Use the national railroad site in the country you are in for the best ticket prices. Google EuroStar. I forgot the site in England for the EuroStar - you can get good discount tickets if early enough. For the French trains, use voyages-sncf.com. The German rail site is a good site for general schedule information through out Europe - bahn.de. It is easy to use. However, you can only purchase tickets on that site that begin in Germany.

One more point. Rail Europe does not show the nice discounts that you can get on the national rail sites.

See your other post ;-)