I want to take the train from Lucerene to Beaune, France on July 16. I've read as much as I can online and figured out that the best route seems to be to go from Lucerene to Basel (SBB?) to Dijon to Beaune. We can buy the ticket from Lucerene to Basel when we get to Switzerland. The connection from Basel to Dijon is a TGV Lyria train and the connection from Dijon to Beaune is tGV oui! It looks like that ticket can and should be bought ahead. I can do that at Rail Europe or thetrainline or SBB for about $65 each for second class. Does it matter which site? Am I understanding the process correctly?
Thanks the train experts for your advice.
You looking at a 12:54 pm departure from Luzern. sncf-connect is showing 88.90 EUR for this route from Luzern, so if you can get it for $65, go for it.
Actually the $65 was just Basel to Beaune. I was going to buy the first piece when we got to Switzerland. I was thinking if we left Lucerne early in the day we could check our suitcases and look around Basel a bit.
And, I thought it was too early to buy the Lucerne to Basel connection.
You can buy the Luzern to Basel bit together with the Basel to Baune bit on www.sbb.ch, and done this way the Luzern - Basel bit will even be a bit cheaper. But that will not give you the opportunity to spend some time in Basel, that is correct.
But the best place to look for tickets for trips to/from France is Trainline, as they will try to combine the cheapest tickets for the different segments, and thus might end up even cheaper. Note that if you have the Swiss Half Fare Card you can include this when booking on Trainline.
What you cannot do is buy the whole trip on the SNCF website, as the French Railways are unable to sell e-tickets for Swiss Trains.