Europe Train Tickets - Buy From Direct Websites

Go to www.seat61.com. All of your answers and how-to for train tickets is there and easy to follow. The London to Paris route is on Eurostar.com and go on sale 120 prior to travel. Book early for cheaper tickets. All of the other routes are easy to book, and you'll know WHEN to book, and how to get tickets in many cases printed at home.

Hi George, It was a gret site with loads of info but not very direct. Hence the reason I asked a direct question:) Kind Regards,
Peter

And the direct answer is - go to the national rail site where the trip starts. Use goggle to find the site or use a good guide book.

Hi Peter. For trains beginning in Italy, use trenitalia.com. For France, use tgv-europe.com; (to avoid being redirected, say you live in England and are picking up your tix in France.) Enjoy your trip!

London-Paris: www.eurostar.com Italian Rail: www.fsitaliane.it/homepage_en.html Swiss Rail: www.sbb.ch
Spain: www.renfe.es The best site, of course, is www.bahn.de, but they only sell tickets for connections with at least one end in Germany. So, to simplify your search, forget the others, go to Germany! I know of only one site for French Rail, www.sncf.fr, but if you try to purchase from them, they'll switch you to RailEurope. I've heard there is another site that won't send you to RE. Someone else will know it.

The French one is tgv-europa: http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/?DISTRIBUTED_COUNTRY=GB Spain is renfe.com and for italy, I go to trenitalia.com; the "Le Frecce" website does not show all the routes. Trenitalia.com is under transition right now but it works most of the time. For London to Paris, you will get the best price by buying way in advance; I believe they sell 120 days ahead. There are youth fares. Switzerland to Venice will take two purchases: one from Switzerland to Milan on SBB.ch (use rail.ch for English) and then Milan to Venice on Trenitalia. You can get excellent discounts on the Luzern to Milan journey on rail.ch booking 2 months in advance. The mini fares on Trenitalia appear 90 days in advance, I believe. They can be as low as 9 euros and then go up, stepwise, to 19, 29, etc.

If you can handle reading a bit of french( its pretty self explanatory really) then you can use sncf.co just don't switch to english. eurostar.com, enter france or uk as you country. they don't care ( I have done this 4 times now) and then you don't get redirected. Buy as soon as you can for best rates. tgv or idtgv for tickets from france. Enter uk or france.

Thank you Bob, Lee, Lola & Pat... For a direct answer to a direct question;) Very helpful & greatly appreciated! Organising a 5 week journey is difficult enough for a first timer without having to sift through information websites:) People like yourselves make great forums, once again Thank you!