Best website to buy AVE tickets

On the RENFE website, of course: http://www.renfe.com/
RENFE is the Spanish national railway company and runs most of the trains in Spain (apart from local commuter services). "AVE" (Alta Velocidad Española) is their brand name for high speed trains.
Rail Europe is a north American reseller which only offers some tickets at marked up prices.

See this webpage for more info on buying Spanish tickets: http://seat61.com/Spain-trains.htm#How_to_buy_train_tickets_for_Spain

P.S. I am continually amazed that people post they have gone to sites that offer them prices in '$', and that does not ring alarm bells. Spain does not use '$', it uses '€'. Any site quoting prices for trains in Europe in '$' is doing a conversion, probably not to your advantage.

Rail Europe isn't able to offer the Spanish advance-purchase discounts that you'll find on the Renfe site. Renfe takes PayPal and some US credit cards. If it doesn't work for you, then Petrabax.com is another US agent that has prices similar to Renfe.

Chris,
It rang alarm bells. That's the reason I posted. :)

Susan,
It's great that you posted! ;-)

As Chris has suggested, the best site to purchase train tickets for travel within Spain is 'Renfe'

It's best to pay with PayPal when booking your train tickets with Renfe.

When I booked our tickets for last Fall, I booked 2-3 months in advance for discounted tickets.

Enjoy your trip!

Susan-

I agree with the others that the RENFE site is the best place to buy the tickets, but it isn't the friendliest to non-Spanish speakers. Use of Google Translate AND a hard-copy Spanish/English dictionary might be useful if you don't know the language.

On the plus side, there is an option to purchase your tickets in Passport form, so it goes directly to your ticket section on your phone. Very handy if you can't access a printer.

A few tips for RENFE: Don't try and use your US credit card. It probably won't work no matter what you do until the umpteenth time and then for some reason it magically works. Try and buy another ticket 5 minutes later and it won't work again. Just use the Paypal option.

There is an English language option but it will sometimes bounce around from page to page into Spanish. Hence the need for some translation.

The discounts can be tricky. The cheapest fares are non-refundable and that is firm. The mid-tier fares can be changed if you need to. Those do sell out so you may or may not find discounted fares.

You have to be careful with the stations and spell things in Spanish. Sevilla not Seville (Santa Justa station). Puerta de Atocha is the station you need in Madrid (NOT Cercanias).

Also should remember that Rail Europe is basically a travel agency for the convenience of North American travelers. They run no trains. R Europe will provide a lot of service if needed and sometimes they will have sale or promotion that can match the discount tickets.

Hello Susan,

I always have trouble on the RENFE site, so I typically use www.petrabax.com whenever I buy advance rail tickets for Spain. They also, like RENFE, offer promotional pricing for advance ticket sales. There is of course a small mark-up over the RENFE prices (everyone is in business to generate a profit!) but the mark-up is small and the site has several advantages: it is entirely in English, it works the first time all the time, and it is significantly cheaper than Rail Europe. Also, I always have my tickets delivered to my computer within 5 minutes of the transaction.

I used the Renfe site, but with some caveats.

I found the TripAdvisor tutorial invaluable (couldn't have done the booking without it): http://tinyurl.com/cu48wk5

One of my trips was Toledo through Madrid to Barcelona. I only found two trains showing up on Renfe's site, but looking on Bahn (which has schedules for all of Europe), I saw lots of options. I ended up booking two separate tickets - Toledo to Madrid and Madrid to Barcelona. If you want to use the Bahn (German Rail) website http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en, here's Rick's tutorial: http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/online-schedules

I indeed found that my credit card didn't go through (I was on the phone with Capital One and the charge never even got to them to be rejected). PayPal went through without a hitch.

In the end, I realized I had needed FIVE websites (Renfe, TripAdvisor, Bahn, Paypal - and Rick Steves to learn about all of these) to book the tickets! But it did work!

The Renfe site only has tickets for advance purchase through June 11 posted. They have not posted the summer schedule yet. I'm waiting for tickets on June 19 and 20, but they don't show up as of this morning.

I used RailEurope to buy train tickets for that exact same leg (maybe we'll see you there in the date aligns!). Even though I know I paid more, I was happy to because it was much more user friendly than Renfe (as documented in the comments above). The chances of me buying the wrong tickets are pretty good... I figure the extra money I shelled out was better than being stuck in one place on a tight schedule.

I can recommend Petrabax and Loco2 for purchasing train tickets in Spain. Both are North American friendly and while there is a markup, it's not very much given the ease of use of these websites.