I will be traveling through a few countries this June. I will be buying a Eurail pass and I was wondering how exactly I would go about reserving seats on the overnight trains. Also, I looked on the Eurail site: http://www.eurail.com/planning/train-seat-reservations/overnight-fees Are overnight seats for Barcelona-Paris really an extra €71 for a tourist seat? Are there other options other than the Elipsos? €71 seems like a lot to pay in addition to the cost of the Eurail pass for 5 countries. Thanks in advance for the help.
Posted by
Oak Park, Illinois
4535 posts
Keep in mind that Eurail charges more than the national railroads. But overnight trains can fill up ahead of time and waiting untill your arrival is not a great option. Flying may truly be a similar price and much shorter time, though you'd have to pay to stay somewhere overnight so it's unlikely you'll save any money.
Posted by
Lakewood, CO, USA
47 posts
Hi Serge! I too was a little shocked by the cost of the Elipsos trains. We are taking the Milan-Barcelona and Barcelona-Paris night trains in June. The only other option I found was to use a whole day to take many different trains which saves you most of the reservation fee. We didn't want to waste two days we could being seeing amazing things in a train so we thought the extra fee was worth it. I used raileurope.com to book my reservations ( I also bought our global youth passes here) and for both trains I think I paid about $250. We are looking at it like the splurge we would have spent on a nicer hotel since we are staying in hostels all over Europe.
Posted by
OP
NY
2 posts
Thanks so much Michelle. My friends and I didn't want to waste a whole day traveling either so we figured that the night train would be the best idea. After price comparing, it might just make more sense for us to fly with Ryanair. Even if it comes out to about the same price, it will end up saving us a bunch of time (hopefully). Thanks for your help!