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train pass v. individual tickets

Traveling London-Paris, Paris-Lausanne, Lausanne-Venice, Overnight train Venice-Paris, Paris-London June/July 2013. This is over a 5 week period. Would individual tickets be better than a pass (or is a pass even possible?). Thanks for your help.

Posted by
120 posts

I'm not sure that a pass is possible, but even if it is you need to do the maths and compare the cost.

Posted by
23626 posts

Couple of thoughts. Are you airline tickets booked? If not fly into London and come home from Venice. Much cheaper. Second you cannot answer the question about which is cheaper without pricing the train trips and comparing to the pass. A pass is NOT automatically cheaper these days because of the additional fees for reservations. Got to do your homework.

Posted by
33845 posts

To agree with the above... a couple of things ... Is that all the train riding you will be doing? The London-Paris and return are not covered by any pass, and if you use the pass "discounted" fares you will pay more than if you just get the tickets when they become available (soon). You will save buckets of dubloons by getting your air tickets "open-jaw" or "multi-city". They will cost about the same roundtrip USA to London and will save you that entire trip back from Venice to London. That would mean just Paris-Lausanne and Lausanne-Venice for the pass. You don't need a Global Pass for those 2 trips, and France now no longer participates in the Selekt Pass passes so you couldn't do that either. Those two trips will be much cheaper than any pass could be. I don't know of any 2 day passes, and your cost per used train day is going to be excessive. Buy the two trips with non-changeable seats when they come out, just like your Eurostar purchase from London to Paris, and they will all be very reasonable.