Hi,
We're having difficulty booking travel from Barcelona to Marseille. Flights are available through Veuling; trains through Rail Europe (partnered with Rick Steves). The air travel is less total time. Here's our concern: reviews for both the airline and the train service are pretty dismal. We don't really want to rent a car. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Debbie,
1) You can't book a hire car. One-way international car hire attracts a very large surcharge.
2) Do not use Rail Europe to look up trains, they only show some trains and charge more for those they do show.
Use German Railways (DB) site: https://www.bahn.de/p_en/view/index.shtml
For a random day in August, this shows roughly one train every 2 hours, taking about 5½ hours and changing once. Plus one direct train at 16:45, arriving 21:20, that is 4h35. Click here for details of this particular train (I hope this link works).
Ignore RailEurope, no matter who they are partnered with. Buy the ticket from TGV who operates the trains. It is about a 6 1/2 train ride, with 1 hour 40 minute train change in Nimes or Montpelier. If you change in Nimes, the Roman arena is just a quarter mile walk away from the station.
Otherwise, ignore bad reviews and take the Vueling direct flight to Marseilles. They move thousands of people around Europe every day. Somebody must like them.
Good advice from Sam. The Vueling flight takes about an hour. It departs mid-morning. Even if there is a delay you will still arrive at a convenient time. It's cheap and the transfer into Marseille is easy; the airport's useful website is here: http://www.marseille-airport.com/
I like trains so the daytime ride appeals, but that one direct train will arrive in late evening, not so appealing in any big city.
Debbie, we flew Vueling from Marseille to Madrid in 2014 which was right on time and was a reasonable price. We also flew Vueling last February from Rome to Palermo without any problems. I use skyscanner to see what's available and also check easyjet.com if they fly to and from the cities I need.
Other site to check trains is captaintrain.com which is also great for purchasing tickets. I do use the Deutsch Bahn for figuring out which trains and connections I want though.
Hi Debbie, we're going to do this journey in a few weeks time. We are taking the AVE fast train which runs direct to Marseille arriving at 9.20pm. I have only seen good reports about this train.
You don't say when you're going, but happy to let you know how we find the journey if it's after early September this year.
Our plan is to either take a taxi from Gare St Charles to the hotel, or walk depending on how we feel on arrival.
We booked the train through captaintrain.com
Amanda
We flew this route on Vueling a couple of years ago and had no problem whatsoever. The staff at the airport counter were friendly and the everything went without a hitch. We paid extra for the "extras", but it was still a good deal. Our destination was Arles. Exiting the airport we hopped on a quick shuttle to the train and were in our hotel in well under the time it would have taken just to train to Marseille. Safe travels.
