Train Reservations with eurail pass...

James, Are you looking into a "sleeper" car or are you just traveling in the night?

If you are looking for sleeper cars, have you looked into the overnight train schedule from Florence to Nice? There are a few train runs but no sleepers. In the daytime, the run takes 7.0hrs. At night, the runs take 11:00hrs. On one run, you are changing trains twice in the wee hours of the morning. Not cool. For Bern to Rome, it's not too exciting there either. If you catch the 18:35, you have a train change in Milan with an almost 2hr. wait for the next train beginning at 21:20. Still, you can get 8.0hrs in a sleeper on the second train. Or, you can catch the 23:04 in Bern and have no train changes to Rome. This is the popular 313 Luna train.

On your Florence to Nice run, most of the train segments are R trains. No reservations are permitted. A couple of segments could be on ICPlus or ES trains which do require reservations. Since I see no trains on these runs with sleepers, you will not face supplemental fees. On the Bern to Rome night train, all will require seat reservations. These can vary depending on the train run as I see various train categories. If you are after a sleeper on this run, you will pay an additional supplemental fee.

How would I go about booking that? I have tried the site listed on here but I cannot seem to get anywhere with it. I would like to book what I need to ahead of time before I leave...

Thanks...

It would help if you would go on to the train sites and identify which train run you want and then let us know. You can best do this on www.bahh.de or www.trenitalia.com Be careful if the travel dates you want are too far out. The schedules could be erratic.

Two questions. Are you looking for sleepers on the night train? And, what are your dates of travel. If your dates are not too far out, I can link you to the schedule. Then we can discuss how to get the tickets purchased.

My dates are next month.

Night train from Amsterdam to Interlakken is on the 8th, arriving the 9th of July.

Night train from Bern to Rome is on the 12th arriving the 13th.

As far as the sleeper question is concerned....We would take anything. If a sleeper is not to expensive ($30p/p) then we would would do that. Otherwise we would just want a spot on the train...

Thanks!!

Departure Arrival Length of Journey Change station Train no. Train Category Info Buy
Station Arrival
23:04
BERN 09:12
ROMA TE 10:08 313 Luna Euronight Details Acquistabile On-Line

This is the line that we would like to use from Bern to Rome...

Does this help?

James, on the Bern to Rome, it looks like you will be coming from Interlaken. Is this correct? If yes, you don't need to go north to Bern to catch the 313. You can leave Interlaken Ost on 7/12 at 23:01 and you will change trains to the 313 at Spiez 21 minutes later. Note that you only have 12 minutes to change trains. Fortunately, the change is on the same platform (#2). Does this sound OK? You could go north to Bern to catch the originating train but you would have to leave Interlaken Ost at 21:01 for the 1-hr. ride to Bern and then wait and hour for the train to depart (there is another train that leaves I.O. at 22:01 but you have 12 minutes to change trains in Bern). If this all sounds OK, lets see how we can get this purchased.

Going from Interlaken to Rome is our plan. I would like to do the 23.01 time slot.

How would I go about getting this reservation?

Thanks for all your help!

One thing you haven't made clear is whether you are looking for a reservation, as in a complete ticket with reserved accommodations, or a "reservation", meaning that you already have your "ticket", i.e., a railpass, and only need to pay the supplement for the accommodation, which will be reserved for you. I suspect the latter, because you seem to want to pay $30, and you can't get a whole ticket for that.

If you have a railpass and are looking for a passholder reservation, the online sources are few and far between. You almost have to go with RailEurope. Fortunately, for the night train from Amsterdam to Zürich, they don't charge much ($17 for a seat, $34 in a chouchette 6) over the price you would pay in Europe (€10 & €20) (except you do pay an additional $18 S&H, for the order).

I would suggest you get your reservation NOW. If they are not already sold out they will be by the time you get over there.

Sorry...I am trying to book a reservation. I already have a railpass. It is the 5 country 10 day pass.

Our plan is to get from Amsterdam to Interlaken. I am pretty sure that is the route to take.

The question is how to book a reservation...knowing that I have a railpass already.

Thanks!!

If you don't want to use RailEurope, you can call CityNightLine in Germany at (your int'l calling code)( Germany code = 49) 1805 14 15 14, 6AM until midnight German time (EDT+6:00) and make a reservation with your credit card. The person answering probably won't speak English, but if you say "English", they will get someone on the phone soon.

For a seat reservation, they will charge €10 (~$16) to your credit card, which might charge up to 3% more for currency exchange. A bunk in a 6-person couchette would be €20 (~$32). I am not sure how you will get the reservation. They might email you a pdf file to print the ticket from home. They might mail it to the U.S. Or, you might have to pick it up in Europe at a ticket counter.

Okay...Is their a number that you can call within the United States?

Trenitalia, the Italian Rail site, shows a direct Florence-Nice night train through 14 June. It's the 366 Montecarlo which originates in Rome. It doesn't appear beyond that date. Two possible reasons: (1) It will be discontinued. (2) Trenitalia hasn't completed loading all the new timetables which will take effect on 15 June. To me it would be worth the price of an international phone call to the Trenitalia Call Center to find out the status of that train. Dial 011 (US international access code) + 39 (country code for Italy) + 06-68475475.

James - We are leaving for our first european holiday on Monday and I found the train reservations very confusing on most sites and expensive on RailEurope. Everyone on this site was very helpful but I just didn't want the stress of making a mistake as our 3wk trip is all covered by train. I used Euraide. They have a U.S. number and Karen was a great help. Her patience with all my questions was a real stress saver! We had our reservation tickets within 1.5 weeks (already had the train passes). Have fun!

EurAide, Inc. (Established 1985)
Phone/Fax: 781-828-2488
URL: www.euraide.com
US Office in Massachusetts: Evenings and weekends

Euraide buys your reservations in Europe at European prices, then sends them over here. They charge $50 S&H. Since the European price is only about $1 per ticket less than RailEurope's price (at least for the CNL train from Amsterdam), you wouldn't save enough to pay for Euraide higher S&H ($50 vs. RE's $18).

However, if you had quite a lot of reservations to make, it might be worth comparing RE prices and what the European (Euraide) prices are to see if it is worth the extra S&H with Euraide. Euraid shows the prices for accommodations on European night trains on their website at www.euraide.com

I had already posted my own question but for some reason didn't get any response so now I'm trying for some help through this related thread. Obviously there are some people here who are very knowledgeable about European train reservations. My question was, if I am going to be taking several day trips throughout Spain and Italy starting on June 23, most of which require reservations (Madrid ->Seville ->Granada ->Madrid ->Barcelona) do I need to make those reservations now or can I wait until I validate my Eurail pass at the TI at Barajas? And if I used Raileurope, could I expect to receive the reservation tickets before I leave for Madrid on the 21st?