Traveling by Train in Europe
For me, one of my favorite sensations is sitting back and enjoying the lull of a train taking me to some new and exciting destination. This might not be the case for someone living in New York City or another city that uses metros heavily, but in San Diego, using the public metro isn’t very common. Thus, I love trains.
We took a train to Amsterdam and later to Barcelona on our European trip. The first trip was stressful due to all the train cancellations in the worst winter Europe has ever seen. Our TGV fast train to Amsterdam should have taken 3 hours but took 6.
No matter. Our second trip, to Barcelona, was smooth and on time. What I love about train travel is being able to sit and read, play games, even get up and get a snack. It beats cross country road trips by car.
There are two ways to travel by train in Europe. One is to get a rail pass, such as what Rail Europe offers. This company was kind enough to give me a pass for my trip. Essentially you pick the number of days you plan to travel by train, and the countries you want to travel in, and buy a pass for those specs.
The train passes are especially good if you’re under 26, traveling 2nd class and don’t necessarily care where or when you travel. For us, traveling with a child on specific dates, option 2 might have been better.
Option 2 is buying tickets directly. This isn’t something that’s easy to research from the US, as when you’re online, the European train sites read your web address as being American, so they redirect you to other sites. But you can buy train tickets between locations for a decent price, usually $10-50, depending on how far in advance you buy them.
Be aware that if you do buy a train pass you need to also buy a reservation for a train. It used to be (and maybe still is for the under 26 tickets in 2nd class) you could get on any train without a reservation, but now the high speed trains and others require a reservation, which is cheaper than a ticket if you have the pass.
We’ve spent many hours researching the best way to get tickets and reservations for trains online, and to be honest, there’s not a lot out there. So if you have questions about it, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll reply to the best of my knowledge. If I can help any of you, I’d love to!
Susan Payton is President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations and writes the blog The Marketing Eggspert
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Another interesting option if you buy a Eurail Pass and are over 26, is to get a discount with a saver pass. Eurail’s Saver rate is great for 2 to 5 people, as each passenger receives 15% off on the normal adult price.
Also for children aged 4-11 get 50% off on the adult fare and children under 4 travel for free.
For seat reservations, good point that Eurail pass holders still need a reservation on certain trains, including high speed and overnight trains. I have found the same – that there are not many options for making advance reservations – but I found ACP Rail International does offer advance reservations.