im traveling from London to Paris, Paris to Amsterdam (wanting to make a stop in Brussels for the day but not to stay overnight), then Amsterdam to Venice (may fly to Venice on Transavia?), Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome all within 26 days. im having a hard time trying to figure out how to do the train system. ? buy a one-way ticket to each place or buy some kind of train pass. not sure which pass would work for my plans or would it be ok to just buy one-way tickets once i get there or should i buy train tickets in advance? there will be 2 people traveling together. any advice would help. thanks
Posted by
Minneapolis, MN, USA
8700 posts
IMO, a railpass would not be a good choice. You would have to pay a passholder's fare for the London-Paris Eurostar and for the Paris-Brussels Thalys. Reservation fees for passholders on high-speed EuroStar Italia trains are 15-20 EUR.
Last-minute tickets for the London-Paris Eurostar are very expensive. The same is true for Paris-Brussels on Thalys trains. However, if you can commit to specific departure dates and times and book well in advance (120 days for Eurostar and 90 days for Thalys), you can get very good discount fares.
Book London-Paris at www.eurostar.com. To get the cheapest fares, register as a resident of the UK. Book Paris-Brussels at www.thalys.com. Choose France and English on the site. Take an IC train rather than a Thalys train from Brussels to Amsterdam. No reservations are possible so buy your ticket in Brussels and hop on any train you wish when you're ready to continue on to Amsterdam.
Flying Transavia from Amsterdam to Venice makes sense. The best train route would be an ICE train from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, a CNL night train from Frankfurt to Milano, and a EuroStar Italia train from Milano to Venezia Santa Lucia. Go to www.bahn.de for detailed timetables. After you get summary timetables for Amsterdam-Venezia Santa Lucia, click on the arrow to the left of each departure time to see the connecting points. To get discount fares, do separate bookings up to 90 days in advance at www.bahn.de for Amsterdam-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Milano. Buy your Milano-Venezia Santa Lucia tickets when you arrive in Milano.
Buy Venice-Florence and Florence-Rome tickets when you get to Venice. If you buy them as soon as you arrive, you might be able to get a small discount.