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Best Rail Pass for Me?

I've spoken with a travel agent and she suggested the youth global pass for 21 days. Our first date to use the pass is August 16th when we leave Paris and the last day will be September 2nd when we head to Florence. We are hitting France, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, MAYBE Germany, and Italy is our final destination.

The deal is this: Our hotel in Paris is booked, our hotel in Nice is TBD but will be booked before we leave. We have places we plan on going, but want to be free to go elsewhere if we decide, as well as stay longer in some places if we want, or skip places on our 'route' to go elsewhere. We want to eliminate all flying, and becauseo f this we'll add places between Amsterdam and Vienna, and between Vienna and Nice (We'll be going to switz)

What does everyone think of this? Is the global pass what we want, or is there something else that would work just as well?

All comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated in advance.

Posted by
7570 posts

The standard reply is figure out point to point costs and compare...but you mentioned several things that make me think the pass is a good choice. You have lots of countries, so a select pass is less of a choice. You want flexibity, so a pass will have it's advsntages since you can't take advantage of buying well ahead at discount. Youth pass saves you even more, and at $672 US and todays exchange rate, you would burn that up quick in a few long legs or a couple flights. I would suggest trying to use mostly regional trains to avoid reservation fees and upgrade charges. I would say for the sake of simplicity, go for it.