Booking seats, etc

RailEurope is not a provider of train schedules, they are a seller of rail tickets, and they don't sell tickets for all trains. They only show schedules for trains for which they sell tickets, and these are usually for the fastest, most expensive train. So a lot of trains, the best bargins, don't show up on RailEurope.

Don't use them. The best place to go for train schedule all over Europe, in my experience, is the German Rail website.

While I prefer trains to planes, in this case I suggest that you fly Barcelona-Pisa on Clickair and take a train from Pisa to La Spezia.

Thank you for the info. It definitely gives me much more to choose from.

For that trip I assume you are considering doing it as an overnight, from Barcelona to Milan there is an overnight train (I think runs only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays), and that train is bookable on a site called TGV Europe (will be cheaper than booking on RailEurope, and can get an electronic ticket).

Then from Milan to La Spezia in the morning you can book an electronic ticket on the Trenitalia website

Sorry not sure how to add links in messages, but both sites are google-able!

I tried the website TGV Europe to book a train from Prague to Ljubljana but it switched me over to the Rail Europe website. Not much help there.

GByron,

no surprise there. French Rail is the major owner of RailEurope. If you live almost anywhere else in the world, like a little island in the South Pacific, as long as it's not North America, French Rail will sell you a ticket at the same price as in France and mail it to you. But if you tell then you are in the U.S., they will make you buy the same tickets at a substantially higher price from RailEurope.

If you call German Rail, at +49 1805 99 66 33, they will sell you tickets for anywhere in Europe at European prices, charge it to your credit card, and mail them to you for €3,50.

GByron:

I got around the RailEurope switch by selecting Great Britain as my country rather than USA.

GByon- Did you have it sent to a US address or is it an electronic ticket?

The tgv-europe site doesn't allow bookings for routes that are entirely outside of France. That's why you couldn't book Prague-Ljubljana on that site.

Rail Europe gives only one route for Prague-Ljubljana, the one for which it sells tickets. (No coincidence.) The bahn.de site shows many different departure times and routes, including a direct night train.

The one route shown on the RE site isn't even the best day route. It requires two connections and takes 12hr33min. it's possible to do it with only one connection and a total travel time of 11hr16min.