Rail Passes

You can use a saver pass alone. But that will use up a railpass day that your husband cannot recover. In other words, your 8-day pass means 8 for you but only 6 days of travel for him if you plan to use up 2 railpass days going to Venice and back independently. But if your husband gets his own selectpass for free anyway, isn't it cheaper just to buy one selectpass for yourself than to buy a saverpass for two?? Before you buy any passes, I suggest that you provide your itinerary here - it's often the case that railpasses aren't the best deal at all.

We would save his company a few $$ as well as ourselves by buying the saver passes, but your explanation of the way they work is most helpful and makes me realize that the pass will work better for us. I don't want to use two of his days for my trip. I'm pretty sure the passes are going to work for us best, given this itinerary: Fly to Rome, three nights in Rome then drive (auto) to La Spezia, drop the car and spend five nights in 5T. Take the train from 5T to Zurich, day trips from Zurich (an over night trip to Venice for the girls and a sightseeing train trip in Switzerland for all of us). Then take the train to Paris, two nights there and drop the girls at the airport bound for home. We spend another few days in Zurich with some side trips. I think we could easily use eight days of pass, and the five or six day pass will work well for the girls. In a situation like this, passes would work better than P2Ps, don't you? I've priced the P2P tickets....

I'm still a little confused about which legs the niece and daughter are traveling. Are they doing the 5T-Zurich train leg with you or flying into Zurich later? If they're with you, I guess that would be 5 major travel days for them, I think. But from your itin it seems you have 6 train travel days yourself and your husband 4. Be sure that you are figuring only days on the railpass that you are actually traveling long distances and would have to pay more for regular tickets. 1.) There are some Europa-spezial prices for advance sale tickets at the bahn.de site from Milan (maybe drop there) and possibly other Italian cities to points in Germany, like Ulm, which pass through Zurich; you'd just get off in Zurich. The ones I saw were 87 Euros/couple. 2.) Fares from Singen, Germany, just across the Swiss border, to Venice run 39 Euros each way. The same fares exist between Schaffhausen (north of Zurich) and Paris. Both options would involve some minor extra expense to reach these cities from Zurich but the cost is probably far less than the p2p fares you may have found at a site like Rail Europe. Still, it's not worth going too far out of your way, for sure, unless you have a whole lot of time. You might look at the bahn.de to see good fares are there on your dates and do the math. Railpasses have $50 discount for booking by 5/3, according to this site, a considerable savings. If your daughter won't be 26 yet, the girls can do the youth pass. The trips to and from Venice eat up a lot of time. I'd be tempted to look into low-cost air carriers too. Speaking of time, Paris isn't too close either; if your 1-week Zurich base includes Paris and to Venice, I think you should consider an itinerary makeover. There's a lot to see in Switzerland too.

Wow - some excellent information here .... thank you! The girls will fly in to Rome with us, drive to 5T, then we'll all take the train to Zurich. We have ten days in Zurich so I wanted a nice side trip. Then they leave from Paris after a two day stay in the city. I know it's ambitious, but we wanted to fit it in after a nice, leisurely week in 5T. I will look into the prices a bit more carefully! Venice is not a given, still considering it.