Eurostar ticket purchase in USA

I would suggest www.eurostar.com. I see fares of $104 but there may be specials.

I bought my tickets thru www.raileurope.com
I ordered and had to pay a $15.00 fee for handling and shipping but had my tickets in hand in less than a week. We're scheduled in September. I had been looking at ticket prices for a Friday but the prices went up for that day and I ended up booking for Thursday instead at a much lower ticket price.

It appears you can get a round trip ticket for $56.00 in October at this time. Good luck!

I'm not sure that you'll find a $56.00 round trip ticket on Raileurope for London-Paris. You WILL find $166 round trips. If going one-way, the RailEurope charge is $104 plus their delivery fee. Both charges are similar to what you'll find at Eurostar.com or at the French national rail site. Just remember, these low-fare tickets are non-changeable and non-refundable.

Two comments. You can also log into the Eurostar website for another country (say UK) and then make your purchase in Pounds rather than dollars. Check the cost difference for the exchange as it may be cheaper to make the same purchase in Pounds.

Also, picking up tickets at the station is amazingly easy (insert credit card and get tickets) rather than paying for shipping to have them in advance.

Nancy - Eric makes a great point about the different versions of the Eurostar website. Our one way trip from Paris to London in September was £44 each (@ $87.50 on my credit card a month ago) on the UK version (.co.uk) of the Eurostar website and $104 on the US version (.com). I checked the French version at the time and it was much more expensive.

As for the $56 round trip tickets - that is the special fare each way based on a same day round trip ticket so the total cost is $112. If you book on RailEurope, they charge the $15 delivery fee where in the Eurostar website does not charge with station pick up.

We ordered our Eurostar tickets through RS website and paid about $15 for shipping and handling. We were very pleased. You have enough time to grab a good price ticket.

As said by someone else, picking up your pre-ordered tickets at St. Pancras is a piece of cake. If you don't want to use a machine, there is an office with 2 agents who will issue your ticket & then inform you which way to go. Take 90 seconds. Use the $15 you have now saved yourself to buy a bottle of wine and a piece of cheese at Monoprix.

Nancy, occassionally RailEurope has "free" shipping specials. I lucked out and got mine for free ship.

I also emailed Rail Europe and specified my seats. I wanted the ones that faced each other (ie: family seating) and was glad we did.

Eurostar.com you can get a better deal but you don't necessarily get to communicate what seats you want.

Regardless, remember that the cheaper tickets are non refundable,not exchangable. Hence, the huge discount.

We also purchased our EuroStar tickets from RailEurope several years ago. We asked for a specific day and time. They said our requested time was sold out so they just sent us tickets on a different timed train without even asking us.

Personally, I don't like RailEurope. They don't list all of the trains, they overcharge, and they charge for shipping.

I've since learned to purchase tickets directly from the rail sites and either print them directly from my own printer or pick them up at the station. It's much cheaper AND you get to pick the exact train you want.

Case in point - we just returned from a European fieldtrip with 14 high schoolers. We bought train tickets from Rome -> Venice, Venice -> Milan -> Spiez. I requested a group student quote from RailEurope AND I spoke personally with a Trenitalia staff person who books tickets for student groups.

RailEurope sent me a "laughable" quote for these tickets that was $1500 more than the Trenitalia person. Obviously I used the Trenitalia person and went to her office in Rome to pick up the tickets. She was exceptionally pleasant to work with and made sure we were all in the same car and in a block of seats together. What a huge savings!

I avoid RE whenever possible!

We ordered ours through the RS site also. Very satisfied.
http://ricksteves.raileurope.com/us/rail/eurostar/index.htm