eurorail passes vs. point to point

Grace: I'm so jealous that you've got the time and energy to take on such an itinerary. What you're doing is taking on three trips of a lifetime back to back. My thoughts: 1. Few travelers are getting rail passes these days due to high costs. Most are traveling on point to point tickets and mixing in budget air carriers. 2. It's obvious researched your itinerary carefully. 3. Your first and last day of every trip is spent getting over jet lag and getting to the airport; wasted days. 4. Unless you've been in Amsterdam before, spend another day or two there. 5. You'll find it difficult to get to Interlaken from Munichprobably over to Stuttgart and down thru Zurich by train. 6. When you get into Italy, you might do better to first visit the C/T, and limit the stay to 2 nights. Then take the train over to Venice and back to Florence for 3 nights. Siena is best taken as a day trip from Florence by bus (not train.) The train trip down to Rome is quick and efficient from Florence. 7. Forget Nice and Monaco and fly from Rome FCO to Barcelona on Vueling Air, which is a budget airline. It'll save you substantial money and have extra time to visit other great places in Spain. I used to rent a car in Europe and drive as far and fast as possible in 2 weeks. Now, I choose to stay on one or two places and see the countryside by rental car. I also get to know the society, food and culture by slowing down. Keeping up to such an itinerary will be very difficult mentally, physically and fiscally. If I was going on such an odyssey, I'd make room reservations for the first city, and then make reservations (by notebook or laptop) as the trip progresses. There's no telling what side trips or road blocks that come up, and keeping a concrete 6 week schedule is just not easy.
And remember to have the time of your lives.

You really need to price out your P2P tickets vs the cost of a rail pass. You need also factor in if you want to be tied to advance reservations (to get cheaper P2P rates) or want the flexibility of a pass. If using a pass there may be reservation fees you will need to pay on the trains that require a reservation or go with slower local trains that do not require reservations.

Grace, here is how I approach this. A ten-day Global Pass is $591 for each of you, so each travel day costs $59 PLUS the cost of the required reservations on each train you will be taking. On days you have several trains that require reservations, you will pay each time. Reservation fees for pass holders vary from 10 to 20 euros. So on average you will pay about $70 for each day of travel with a pass. I checked some routes for your actual days of travel (or close) and founding every case it is much less than $70. Like this: Berlin to Prague on 16 May, 39€ each. Prague to Munich on May 19, 29€ each on the 4.5 hour bus Munich to Interlaken on May 22, 39€ each for the 4-change route which is the fastest. I didn't check Italy but in most cases when buying this early you can get the Super Economy fares on the ES trains of 9 or 19€. ( Here I will digress and suggest you swap Rome and Venice in the order of your trip,to avoid backtracking. Also, Interlaken to Rome is a very long day. Interlaken to Venice is still long, but better. I second the suggestion to fly from Italy to Barcelona, unless you have a burning desire to see Monaco. The route by train from Nice to Barcelona is convoluted. You could add the time saved to get 2 extra days in Spain, to add to Granada and Sevilla. Barcelona to Sevilla on the train has a Promo fare of 46,65 for 14 June. Sevilla to Granada and Granada to Cordoba are inexpensive MD or Altaria trains, around 30€ or less. Cordoba to Madrid on the AVE has a promo fare of 23,60 on 16 June. So, you would save a lot with these discounted fares. The downside is they are not refundable and cannot be exchanged, so your itinerary would be cast in stone. If you need flexibility, the pass would alow that, but remember that the total cost will be more like $785 when you include reservation fees.

At the very least, the Nice-Barcelona leg should be done by air. There are 45 Eu fares available for your date on Vueling. Just as an excercise, I went through a P2P price up, and you maybe a candidate for a Global Pass. Factor in that you still need seat reservations, 4 Eu on German fast trains, 10 Eu on Italian fast trains, and similar on Spanish trains. You are going to want fast trains with this grueling (rhymes with Vueling) schedule, which would frankly scare the ____ out of me and send my wife straight to divorce court. But your young (unless your one of those elder students). As previous poster pointed out, maybe you want to be a bit more fluid in your schedule. Having a few milestones (first day, day you need to be in Nice or Rome or Florence for your nonrefundable, unchangeable Vueling flight), and the day you fly home.

Kelly, you definitely want to do a 30 day Eurail. If you are traveling with someone that will stay with you, do a Supersaver pass. Its much cheaper, but you two have to be together on the train trips. Your going to be on trains to much. Your hitting all big cities too. Big cities will have 5-8 stops in one city. I suggest probably getting a pass for city transport when your in the cities like Madrid and Barcelona and Berlin. Each of the cities has bus/subway/tram passes in each city, for usually 3 days, as well as museum passes. Are you reading Ricks books, they are filled with that info. In Cinque Terra, there is only one train connecting all 5 villages. That is the only transport, besides boats. Be ready to relax there. There is absolutely nothing to do there. If laying on the beach is your thing enjoy. Its is spectacular. Great Itinerary. That's a lot of train travel. Long, long trips. If the weather is not too hot, consider night trains. They are great, you have to reserve them, and it may be hot or cold, and you have to share the room with someone. But for a a young person they are great. One time we split the room with a guy that was embezzling meat from Rome to Munic. The boarder patrol broke into our room at 2 am and went through his luggage, yelled at him and ripped our a scale and weighed his meat and he had a pay a fine right then and there. We call it our encounter with the Meat Police. Good times, I tell you. We are doing 10 countries in 30 days in June, with backpacks, Its great, you will love it. You sound young, we are old, 45. So we like the small villages and try to stay out of the city. But when we first did it, we hit all the big cities. Have a great trip, '
Karen

Kelly, Great that you have 38 traveling days in Europe as I will have this summer over there. If you get the Pass, the fast German trains, the ICE, don't have mandatory reservations. Ues the Pass on the long rides using a fast train,is., Amsterdam-Berlin. The easiest way is to go Amsterdam-Duisburg, then Duisburg Hbf. to Berlin Hbf on the ICE. You leave Amsterdam early in morning, you'll be in Berlin by the late afternoon on 14 May. Don't waste too many Pass days on regional trains, only the more expensive ones. I would plan out the specific rides #1 to #10 when using the Pass. "Money conscious"...I suggest staying hostels, book those if you don't think thr trip will deviate. Or, do a night train, eg., Amsterdam-Berlin, that's direct at night.

30-day pass will not cover their trip and a youth pass is not available as a Saver pass. The person above who recommended a 30-day pass will find out when using theirs that the reservation supplements will make it cost much more than they think. Those are required in Italy, France and Spain. In Italy, you can find Super Economyfares on the IC and ES trains of 9 euro which is LESS than the cost of the reservation fee you pay to use a pass. And in Spain the passholder supplement to use a pass on the AVe trains is really high. Grace/Kelly should read about pass usage for each country they will travel in, in the Railpass section before buying that pass. Since they have a set plan that requires moving every 3 days or so, they could price their trip using point to point discount tickets with the prices Lola posted above. They would have to get busy buying thos tickets now, or as soon as they are available ( Italy). A pass is fine if you want the luxury of " winging it" and going when and where you want. But you pay a steep price for that flexibility.

Wow! Thanks so much to everyone for the informative responses. My sister and I have a lot to discuss! I am quite sure I will be back on the graffiti wall with follow up questions. I very much appreciate the help.