Eurail Pass or Individual Tickets?

What pass and into which countries are you traveling? Are you aware that most countries charge a seat reservation or supplemental fee for riding their premium trains? This would have to be added onto the cost of your Eurail pass. If you are traveling in Italy, a Eurail pass is rarely, rarely less than P2P. I've done tons of comparisons and the Eurail pass has never been found to be less expensive in Italy.

Rick...depends on where you're planning to travel. Many of us have found that point to point tickets are far cheaper than a rail pass for all but the busiest travel schedules. If you've compared your journeys' costs on the RailEurope or similar site selling passes, then you weren't getting an accurate reflection of point to point costs. Maybe you could list your itinerary so someone can offer more accurate advice.

3 countries- France Spain and Italy.

Here is the train itinerary:
Paris - Bordeaux AND
Carcassonne - Barcelona AND
Pisa - La Spezia (Cinque Terre) AND
La Spezia - Venice

First, where did you find the prices of the individual tickets? If you used railEurope, understand that their individual ticket prices are a lot higher than what you would pay in Europe. Also, they only include the most expensive trains. There are less expensive individual tickets than the ones you see on RailEurope.

Second, make sure you understand the full cost of the railpass. Premium trains often have a large surcharge (called a reservation fee) for passholders that is included with individual ticket prices.

Third, check out all of the discount fares that are available, particularly in France and Germany. You can often find discount tickets that allow you to travel entirely across Germany in a day for €29.

I've spent 14 weeks traveling by train in Germany, and I have never found the cost of a railpass to be anywhere close to beating the cost of individual tickets.

Thank you Lee. I am searching Rail Europe as a last resort but am not sure the best sites to look at. DB Bahn is phone only for non German tickets and TGV Europe seems to handle only France. Is there a better site to check? Thanks for the help!

Rick, how are you getting from Barcelona to Pisa? That's a lot of train time. Another option is to fly the budget airlines. Barcelona to Pisa on www.clickair.com. Or you have more options by flying into Milan. In addition to Click Air, you have www.vueling.com or www.easyjet.com. Much faster and less expensive.

As I mentioned above, you don't need a railpass in Italy. From Pisa into and out of the CT, fares are under 10Euro. CT to Venice is 20Euro-44.10Euro depending on which class of train you ride. Your Eurail pass will get on any R train without extra cost but step on any Eurostar and you will pay an extra 15E-20E for the seat reservation fee. You don't need a Eurail pass in Italy.

Larry- We are flying from Barcelona to Pisa (Clickair has the best price) Where are you finding the 10 and 20 Euro prices for Italy? I can only book on TrinItalia which reverts to the Rail Europe website.

When I used www.trenitalia.com, it sent me to the Italian language Trenitalia site, where I could select English. I quickly found a 4 hr connection through Milan for €40,70. Part of that trip was by Italian Eurostar (ES*), which would include a "reservation" fee of €15-20 Euro for a passholder.

I also found Pisa to La Spezia for €10.

When I tried other URLs to the Trenitalia site, I was sent to Google, which showed RailEurope as a "sponsored link", but that doesn't mean you have to go to them.

Rick...for Paris-Bordeaux and Carcassonne-Barcelona, use the French national rail site at tgv-europe.com . Just make sure you keep selecting "Great Britain" as your country of residence....it will keep the site in English and won't affect ticket pickup or printing. For Paris-Bordeaux, I have TGV prices as low as 35 Euro...for Carcassonne-Barcelona, unfortunately, not many deals are available....53 Euro is the cheapesst I could find. Hopefully that helps you in your comparison.

Ahh, I was on a look-alike site that redirected me. Thanks for the web address. I'll play with it tonight. Thank you again.

What a PITA. TGV Europe won't take an order from me (Choosing Great Britain, Canada, etc). Rail Europe want 3x the regular cost but won't book a ticket this far in advance so I guess I have to wait for the price to go up higher before they will let me book. I am tempted to just get a Eurail pass and deal with it.

Does anyone have some advice? I am at my wits end here. Thanks.

Rick....if you're booking 60 to 90 days out, you may be too early. What are your travel dates? Exactly why won't TGV-Europe let you buy?

I am booking for August. TGV Europe says my request was cancelled due to a technical error but it doesn't tell me the error. It does take me all the way through to the payment screen. Could it be that I'm trying to book too early? On Rail Europe I can book the Italy portion but it says the France portion need to be booked 60 days or less. Maybe Italy allows bookings further in advance? Maybe it's all me and I'm just jumping the gun. :-)

Update: I gave up and booked an Air France flight from Paris to Bordeaux yesterday.

Today I was able to book my Carcassonne-Barcelona on TGV Europe as a citizen of GB ;-)
Also my Italy trains were bookable today as well. I am done with all the transportation bookings.

Thanks for the help that was given.