Best way to travel from Barcelona to Avignon

Hi Larry, thanks for the advice! One other question that popped in my mind was if it makes sense to purchase the train tickets ahead of time or if it's just as easy to buy them on the day that you want to travel. What did you do? I have used the Renfe site to take trains within Spain, but when I looked for this journey it seemed to difficult to maneuver through the website.

Ruth, we're doing exactly the same thing in a couple of weeks. We'll be taking the train from the Barcelona Sants train station to Nimes. We will rent a car there and begin driving around. We will be staying at the Hotel Le Colbert in Avignon for 2 nights. It seems to be a nice 2-star hotel that's #1 on Trip Advisor and is listed in the RS book. They are about 2 blocks from the train station. Taking the train all the way, you will most likely change trains in Nimes to a local train for the journey into Avignon.

Ruth, we're going to wait until we get there as we qualify for the Tarjeta Dorado (Gold Card). It's for seniors over the age of 65 and it costs 5.05E. Once you have it, you get a 40% discount on travel on Mon-Thur. 25% on Fri-Sun. We're traveling on a Monday so we'll get the best discount. We are departing on the 9:00am train from Barcelona and arriving in Nimes 4hs45 minutes later (13:45) As for your journey, you can take the same train and you will change to the TGV at Figures Vilafant. You will most likely change trains again at Montpelier to the TER train (regional) for the journey to Avignon Centre. The journey takes 6hrs31min. I used to be able to see the run on Renfe but now I can't. However, I can see the run and even buy dicsount tickets on the French train website. Take a look at www.tgv-europe.com/en. As soon as you put in your departure and arrival locations (choose Avignon Centre as your arrival station), choose Great Britain as the place where you will pick up tickets. This will keep the website in English. (Don't worry, you won't be going near Great Britain for this transaction - it just keeps it in English and keeps it from jumping to RailEurope). You'll be printing your tickets at home. Then, the website will give you a choice to go to RailEurope or stay on the TGV-Europe website. By all means, stay on the TGV-Europe website. You can then see your journey options. If you are willing to lock in your departure date and time, you can proceed to purchase the ticket. You can even print it out at home. We've done that already for two train journeys in France.

I'm stalking Larry on his trip, but I will be taking the train from Barcelona to Perpignan, and then pick up my car there. In will then head to Arles, where I will spend 3 nights. My primary reason for picking the car up in Perpignan is that I will be dropping it off there, but if you think there are places you would like to explore between Perpignan and Avignon you might consider that option. In Arles I am staying at Hotel Le Regence. I won't get my train ticket from Barcelona - Perpignan until I arrive in Barcelona.