Trains from Barcelona to Italy

I think what you are missing is that it is a very complicated route with lots of changes. Use Bahn.de, not Raileurope, to see the route. It will show Barcelona Sants to Montpellier to Marseilles to Nice, then on to Genoa with another change at the border. There is a long layover in the middle of the night at Marseilles so it takes a long time. And there is only one train a day leaving Barcelona for Montpellier, late in the afternoon. The alternate route goes inland via Toulouse and uses a night train. Either way it takes 15+ hours. You can see the train routes on this map: http://www.alleuroperail.com/eurorailway-maps/france-map.htm Petrabax refers to a Trenhotel, the Salvador Dali, that goes from Barcelona to Turin and Milan), but it is hard to determine if it is still running. Maybe one of the train experts will come on and come up with better solutions. If not, you might consider flying, or spreading it over several days and visiting France along the way.

Melissa, Using a budget flight on that route will be far easier than a LONG train ride. I can't check the flight options at the moment as that's cumbersome on an iPhone. What is your first destination in Italy? I'll try to have another look at this later and offer some suggestions. Good luck with your planning!

Before buying a Eurail Global Pass I would seriously consider how many days you'll be traveling on a train and to where. The Global pass for a month I think could be as high as $1,100. You can buy a lot of air tickets and/or a lot of individual train trips within Europe for that amount, so I would look at my exact itinerary before buying anything. Also you still have to pay for reservations separately on certain trains. The Global pass pays only if you are on a train a whole lot and in a whole lot of countries (there are also individual countries passes or limited countries passes). If you plan to stay on the ground more days than on a train, you might be better off just buying individual tickets.

And didn't we recently see a notice of some sort that the French railway would no longer accept the Global pass in 2013? Anybody have more information on that?

Thank you for all of the replies so far! Here is a rough itinerary of where we are going in February: Arrive in Paris, morning of Feb 2 Leave Paris evening of Feb 5, was planning an overnight train to Barcelona to arrive morning of Feb 6 Spend Feb 6-7 in Barcelona And then we were planning a train from Barcelona to Italy, by way of France obviously. I'm just starting to look at this leg of the trip and was hoping to do a Cinque Terra to Florence to Venice tour through Italy for about a week total. Now I'm wondering if a flight from Barcelona to Florence would be a better bet and then take a day trip by train to Cinque Terra. From Venice we go to Prague, then through Germany to Amsterdam, a few days in Belgium, and then back to Paris for a flight home on March 1st. A train from Venice to Prague via Vienna seems feasible, but from between Prague and Amsterdam also seems to be a little complicated. I'd love any and all feedback on the best way to organize the travel between destinations!
Also, I priced the global passes this morning and for two people for a one-month consecutive days pass it was $794 per person which seemed reasonable...unless it's not going to get us where we need to go. Thanks much!!!

Also...I just pulled up Easy Jet's website. Are flights really that inexpensive? Around 25-40 euros for a one way from say, Paris to Barcelona or Barcelona to Milan?

OK, there is the article: http://www.eurail.com/france-no-longer-in-eurail-select-pass It is the Seclet pass that France won't participate in. It will still be part of the Global Pass, so you are OK there. But it still may not be the best thing for you. Given the need to pay reservation fees and couchette fees on night trains, people generally do better buying discounted tickets in advance. In Italy, for example, you may be able to get 9 euro Super Economy fares by buying in advance. That is cheaper than th ereservation fee you would pay to use your pass on the IC and Eurostar trains in Italy. And regional trains, like around Cinque Terre, are cheap, not worth covering with a pass.

"Are flights really that inexpensive? Around 25-40 euros for a one way from say, Paris to Barcelona or Barcelona to Milan?" Generally, yes. If that is the price you found for particular days in February, that is the price. but you have to be careful of add-ons and also pay attention to the carry-on bag size and weight limits. If you have to check yor bag because it's overweight there is a penalty.

Yes, the flights are really that inexpensive. The earlier you book, the lower the fare. The fare rises as you get closer to the travel date. EasyJet is a great budget airline but as a budget airline, they nickel and dime you with extra fees for oversize and overweight luggage. Please pay attention to the travel conditions on their website. From Barcelona, you can get some great budget flights to Pisa or Florence on Vueling. Pisa is 90 minutes from the CT by train. The train station is in the airport. Note that they don't seem to fly these routes every day but they do start at 29.99 Euros so plan carefully. Vueling is a very nice Spanish budget airline.

Melissa, To echo the comments from the others, YES, budget flights are really that cheap. I know that, as I used EasyJet twice this year. I few points to keep in mind regarding budget airlines.... > There will be a few extra fees, such as a "booking fee" or whatever. Even with those, the prices are still cheap. > Be very careful with luggage weights. If your checked luggage will be over the included allowable limit, it's cheaper to pay for a higher allowance at the time you book the ticket. If you pay at the gate, it will be more expensive. > Budget airlines usually operate on a "sliding scale", so the prices will increase as the flight fills. Therefore, booking early is a good idea. > Many budget airlines allow only one carry-on item. That doesn't mean "one plus a personal item such as a Purse or Laptop case", it means ONE ONLY of the approved size (and they will check). > Some budget airline routes are seasonal, especially to smaller airports. One point to make on visiting the Cinque Terre in February. That's not the best time of year, as many of the tourist-related businesses will be closed for the season. However, a few places will probably still be open. If you just wanted to make it a day trip to have a look at the scenery, that's certainly possible. It's quite likely that the trails will still be closed at that time, so you'll have to use the local trains. The boats probably won't be operating then. Actually, the trip from Prague to Amsterdam isn't all that complicated. Break up the journey by spending a few days in Berlin. I've travelled that route in the opposite direction and it works well. Cheers!

Melissa, One other comment (ran out of room in the previous reply)..... Travel from Venice to Prague will be about 12-16 hours by train, with at least one change. I'd probably consider a budget flight on that route as well. You can see rail travel times and other details by using the bahn.de website. You might have a look at Air One as they have flights on that route, currently listed as low a €35 PP. One important point to note is that they don't have flights every day, so you may have to adjust your Itinerary slightly. Other airlines also fly between Venice and Prague, but prices are higher and not all flights are direct.

For two of us , our Easyjet flight from Barcelona ot Paris from this past summer were , all included, taxes, checked bags etc, cost total of 97 euros. Cheap you bet. I purchased tickets well in advance and got a good price. We also flew from Nice to Barcelona on Vueling for 82 euros. ( total, ,not each) . I love cheap airlines! We did take the Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, 35 euros each, and we took the idTGV from Paris to Nice for 40 euros each, and that was for first class( which was nice).
Buy tickets well in advance and don't go through a middleman.

Based on your itinerary I would use a combination of low cost airlines (like the ones mentioned above) and trains for shorter segments. For example I would do: PARIS - BARCELONA: Fly EasyJet or Vueling or Airfrance. BARCELONA - TUSCANY (Pisa or Florence): Fly Vueling. Cinque Terre do as day trip from Tuscany by train (cost is puny) FLORENCE - VENICE: Train (2 hrs, ~45 Euros max) with Trenitalia VENICE - PRAGUE: Fly AirOne or train as last resort PRAGUE - AMSTERDAM: Fly Czech, or KLM, or EasyJet(probably cheapest of the 3) AMSTERDAM-BELGIUM (Bruxelles, Bruges?): Train
BELGIUM-PARIS: Train TGV With the price of a Global pass you can probably pay for all of the above with plenty of money to spare if you purchase tickets ahead of time. Plus you will have more time to see the cities and waste less time traveling from place to place.

Hi, As regards to hopping on the trains either with a point to point ticket or a Pass, that can still be easily done in CZ, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, ie., in Central Europe minus Poland, since the Global Pass doesn't include Poland. No reservations are mandatory (day) there even on the IC, Rail Jet (RJ), or ICE (except for that special case re: ICE but who sees that?) I suspect it would be even more convenient going from Wroclaw (Breslau) to Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan (Posen), or Gdansk (Danzig) or let alone from Berlin or Vienna if Poland were included. The night trains have mandatory reservations, even for a seat in a six seat compartment, assuming you have no problems sleeping sitting. Even these compartment seats do sell out, esp on a week-end, since the locals or other tourists book them. You can do Amsterdam-Prague by day too, time it right you avoid taking any regional trains. For the day ride, take Amsterdam to Duisburg, once in Duisburg you can catch an ICE Berlin direct, then transfer to Prague on the EC, ca 4+ hrs. in which case you'll arrive at 20:00 or so.

Hmmm...well the only countries we'd be passing through in eastern Europe is CZ, Germany and Netherlands. Assuming we don't have to pass through any other bordering countries en route. Also we'll be going from Prague north, and not the other direction. Germany is one leg of the trip that we haven't really planned out yet. We have about 4-5 days to spend there, and we may jump around a bit. I'm wondering if just buying point-to-point tickets once we get to Europe is a better way to go than getting a pass that would limit us to the number of times we can move around.

One issue with the Eurail passes (Global or ) is that many countries charge supplemental fees on top of the pass to ride their better trains. You can pay for these extra fees online or at the train station. On the French TGV or the Italian Frecci fast trains, you do not have seat reservations until you pay for these extra supplemntal fees. For the French TGV, the fee is 3Euro. For the Italian Frecci trains, it's 10 Euro. For the Thalys, its close to 40 Euro. Thalys is one of the worst on supplemental fees in Europe. You can get advance purchase tickets on the Thalys train for less cost than you pay for the supplemental fee. Please note that the French TGV and the Thalys train from Paris to Brussels or Amsterdam (or reverse) also limits seats to passholders. France will withdraw their participation in the pass on Jan 1. However, they will continue to participate in the Global pass. For what you are planning, budget flights are really an excellent option.

Thank you everyone! This has been so helpful..I feel like I dodged a bullet by rethinking the rail pass. I am going to put together some itinerary options and I'll report back. Some friends (and my boyfriend whom I'm traveling with for the month) have more of a "just show up and enjoy the adventure" attitude...which I totally get, but I also don't want to spend three times more on transportation than we have to or lose excessive days to long train rides with layovers.

Some friends (and my boyfriend whom I'm traveling with for the month) have more of a "just show up and enjoy the adventure" attitude...which I totally get, but I also don't want to spend three times more on transportation than we have to or lose excessive days to long train rides with layovers. Those days are all but gone I'm afraid. As you've read above, passes have so many restrictions, TVG and Thalys limit seat reservations and overnight trains have limited capacity. About the only way to wander from place to place on your own schedule is to pay, as you say, three times more for it. However, short train trips are usually quite inexpensive. So once in a city, you can head off for a daytrip on a whim.

Hi, I would avoid dealing with Rail Europe. The Global Pass can be bought through others, if you decide on it. I don't get it through Rail Europe. For the Prague-Amsterdam I'd take the night train CNL Amsterdam-Berlin, then change in Berlin to Prague direct. In this case better than going Amsterdam- Frankfurt. The only drawback is you could arrive prior to 0600 in Berlin.

We are interested in taking a longer train trip just for the experience, and we are planning on spending some time in Germany as we travel between Prague and Amsterdam. The Bahn.de site is a little more confusing than the Rail Europe site, upon first glance. I need to dig a little deeper. The fares on Bahn.de do seem less expensive than Rail Europe, just for single tickets between say, Prague and Berlin. Does Bahn.de do some sort of rail pass? I'm wondering if getting a rail pass between Prague and Amsterdam would be a good idea, or if we should just book individual tickets once we are in Europe and decide where to go while we're in Germany.
Any suggestions?

Melissa, If you do find that a Railpass will be the best method for perhaps part of your trip, you might consider buying from this website. Click the "Railpasses" tab at the top of this page. I believe RS is the largest vendor of Railpasses in the U.S., and Rick's excellent staff will be able to answer any questions you have regarding the most suitable pass for your needs. Cheers!