I bought a one way ticket from Paris to Amsterdam using the web site in Rick's book www.tgv-europe.com/en/home. His directions say to choose any other country but the US in order to be able to print out the ticket. It worked just fine. When I tried to buy a return ticket using the same system it would not let me print out the ticket. It was restricted to mail (free) and the address was set up for the country I chose (Canada). So had to go back and put in USA. That sent me to Rail Europe. My trip is September 10, Rail Europe said it was too early to sell the ticket (had to be 60 days before trip), but the other site said that most of the tickets for that train were sold. Dang! Any ideas of how to work with the system. I would like to print it out.
From Amsterdam to Paris purchase your tickets via http://www.thalys.com, and tell the website you will be picking up your tickets in The Netherlands. You'll still be able to print your tickets out at home.
Thanks. Found the site and ordered ticket. But they would not accept my card - and said that they do not accept cards for countries outside Europe. Sigh - this is getting much too complicated.
Success! And thank you for your suggestion. Tonight I tried the Rail Europe site again. This time they were able to process the ticket. 4 hours ago they could not. Only residents of certain European countries can use the Thalys site.
Odd...unless it's something new, the Thalys site does accept US cards. I've purchased tickets countless times, as recently as April this year.