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Train reservations while in europe

Posted by (los angeles, california, usa) on

If i want to wait till i get to europe to book trains, can i book them from any county that has rail? ex. can i book reservations (i have a pass) from the dublin train station for italy? I am traveling to dublin in the beginning of july and will be in italy towards the end. I know its cheaper to book in europe than eurail... does it just depend on the city as to whether other city reservations will be available? also, do you know how much the average reservation costs in europe? it is about 12 dollars on eurail with like 14 dollars for shipping...thanks

o yea here are the trains we will be taking.. i would not mind taking slower trains thet do not need supplements if they are not considerably slower...
we will be taking our first train from amsterdam to koln about a week after arriving in europe, then about every 2 days we have...st goar area to interlaken, interlaken to locarno, locarno to venice, venice to florence, florence to rome, rome to la spezia, la spezia to milan night train from milan to paris (allready booked night train)
My biggest concern is obviously italy, but then we are not on tight schedules so if we can just get one train for that morning/afternoon we will be happy...

Posted by
6898 posts

I would suspect that most of the trains that you will be on from Interlaken/Venice, Venice/Florence, Florence/Rome will be on trains that require seat reservations and thus the additional fee. The fee on a Eurostar is 15-18Euro. You are correct that you can take slower trains (R and IC, to reduce fee costs but on some runs, you will double your travel time (i.e. Venice/Florence and Florence/Rome). For the Rome/La Spezia run, there are a few runs throughout the day on ICPlus trains that go out to the west coast and then north to La Spezia. No train changes. About 3Euro to get seat reservations and they are just as fast as the runs going through through Florence and Pisa that require train changes.

Note also that if you have a Eurail pass, it will only get you a 25% discount on all fares from Interlaken into the Lauterbrunnen Valley. This will include trains and gondolas to Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Wengen, Kleine Scheidegg, Gimmelwald, Muerren and the two mountain tops (Jungfrau and Schilthorn).

Posted by
58 posts

thank you...do you know if i will be able to reserve seats for travel in say italy while i am at dublin train station?

Posted by
4555 posts

Christy....no, you can't make Italian train reservations at an Irish train station.

Posted by
1 posts

Christy,

How did you book the night train? I'm wondering the same as you - how to go about booking the tickets from the states and/or... when I am over there - how to book tickets in advance.

Posted by
58 posts

Hey. we booked the night train through statravel.com. I believe it was the same price through raileurope.com. the tickets were 42 usd with the rail pass and included the reservation and sleeping in a 6 person couchette. we will be leaving in about 2 weeks but will be taking the train on july 31. I just wanted to get it in advance because it will probably be booked... If you do it i believe you have to order it here at least a few days before you go
(sta is taking about a week) because it is like another ticket. i havent gotten it but im assuming i have to present whatever they are sending me.. it kinda sucks that we have to pay on top of the pass but in comparison to the price of the ticket we are saving a lot. hope this helps.

Posted by
81 posts

You should be fine booking the trains a day or two in advance and still finding a seat. Don't worry about there not being room on the trains in Italy. I was just there and had no problems at all and I bought the tickets the night before I left each destination. Granted I got stuck paying for a ticket I couldn't use because of a train strike, but oh well.

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