I'm confused as to which Eurail pass best suits my needs. My daughter and I will be making 5 trips between cities, staying a couple of nights in each ; Rome - Florence - Vernazza - Venice - Gimmlwald - (overnight train) to Amsterdam. Being that I'll be travelling over night, through Germany without getting off, does that count as 1 or 2 days and do I list Germany as one of the countries? Since some of my itinerary will involve transferring trains, does the passes depend on the number of days travelling, or the number of train connections taken? My European friend will be traveling with us in second class and we'd like to reserve a sleeper for all 3 of us, but I don't know how to do that. Help!
Thanks,
Anne
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23784 posts
My first guess is that no pass will suit your needs. BUT, you have to do you homework before you can make that decision. And, yes, if going through Germany it would have to be on the pass. Passes are by day and not connections.
Go the the local rail sites, bahn.de, trenitalia.com, etc., and determine the cost for the tickets. If you are will to commit to a fixed schedule you can often get deep discounts for prepaid tickets. But they are no change, no refund tickets. Even with a pass you will pay extras for seat reservations and especially for the night train. In Italy all trains except Regionale require a seat reservation.
A railpass is seldom a good deal any more. It does provide some flexibility but at a cost.
Posted by
Knoxville, TN, USA
7209 posts
The only railpass I've ever seen that provides flexibility is a Swiss Pass. Otherwise, you're probably just throwing away money when point to point tickets would probably be cheaper and easier.
Posted by
Eastern Iowa, USA
8524 posts
While you can do the research yourself and make decisions, I will at least say that any Railpass for you and your itinerary will not work. Going against you is the following:
You will be in at least 4 countries, probably looking at some type of global pass, but not really doing much travel in three of them, one just passing through.
For Italy itself, point to point tickets are cheap, cheaper if you buy ahead if you know your dates. Figure a trip (Rome to Florence for example) is your travel for the day, and a day will cost you, for a pass, about $60 plus a reservation fee for fast trains of about $15, a full price ticket is less than that, some tickets as low as $30.
The sleeper would not be included in the pass and incur a significant upcharge, you will also want to reserve that ticket far ahead.
Posted by
Green Bay
22161 posts
The advantage of not getting a pass, you'll be able to sit with your European friend in 2nd class instead of sipping champagne and munching on caviar in 1st, while your friend suffers the indignities of travel with the unwashed mob in 2nd :-)
And if you want a 3-person compartment from Basel to Amsterdam, you'd better get cracking. They're already getting booked up for the summer. I see a few at 327 euro total for 3 midweek. As others have pointed out, using a railpass would only knock about 75 euro off of that price.