I want to reserve my train tickets for our upcoming trip to France, 2 weeks away. To reserve online, they're going to charge me $23. Canadian dollars to ship me the tickets!!! Can't I reserve online and just pick them up at the station? I don't want to wait until we get there to book and risk not getting the train I want.
Posted by
Minneapolis, MN, USA
8700 posts
It sounds like you're booking through Rail Europe. If you book through the French national rail site, www.voyages-sncf.com, you can pick up your tickets at the station. Click on the British flag in the lower left-hand corner for English. Not only will there be no shipping fee, but your fare will probably be lower, too.
Posted by
Torrance, CA
79 posts
Tim's right about the SNCF website. You can also print them from home, which is what we did. Here's another thing to think about: for a lot of trains in France (regional, not TGV) you can't make reservations, you can just pay the fare: no seat will be assigned to you. For our upcoming trip, we only bought the tickets that required and allowed reservations. For the other few that we take, we'll buy them when we get there, a few days before we need them, so we aren't rushed trying to get on the train. The SNCF website will alert you when you look at the schedules as to which trains you can or cannot make reservations for. Also, you didn't ask, but a website I have found very helpful is the Die Bahn website, where you can get all the schedules for any journey. www.bahn.de I used this website to make lists of all the departure times for the journeys I'll be making. It also tells you how long and how many transfers. Good luck!