greetings! our trip is fast approaching, and i'm doing some almost-last-minute side trip planning. for the paris portion of our trip, we will be in paris for two weeks. we are taking one overnight 'side trip' out of paris--to amsterdam--but are still looking at other day trips (NOT overnight) to do on our time there. my main concern is the cost of train travel. every time i've looked for train tickets online, i've been redirected to the rail europe site. i did not have this problem booking trains from paris to amsterdam, nor within england or within spain (the other legs of our trip) why is this, and what can i do about it? the prices on the rail europe site are out of this world. for example--a round trip ticket paris to strasbourg is $100 RT per person--and that's the cheapest fare! can this possibly be right? is it less expensive if we just buy tickets at the station? we'd prefer that, actually, but have no idea if that's the cheapest option. we have more time than money, so being able to 'hop on' a train at the last minute would be ideal, so long as it is reasonably priced. additionally,if the answer is 'yes, you can find cheaper train tickets', i'd welcome comments on the goodness of the idea of strasbourg as a day trip, as well as other good day trip suggstions via train out of paris (though it is important to note that we have no interest in normandy).
trip details--traveling with husband, renting an apartment in paris this july for two weeks; arrival on a monday via eurostar, departure on a monday two weeks later, one of us on eurostar back to london, the other on easyjet to barcelona.