Quote:
Originally Posted by Fobulous
I had a question in regards to the Eurail pass.
The wife and I just purchased the 3 country select pass, and now we are looking into booking reservations. I went onto raileurope.ca and found that in order to book a reservation we have to pay an insane amount of money considering we just bought a pass!
For example, we have a 1st class eurail select pass, but I go to book a train from Amsterdam airport to Paris and it is going to cost us $178 in reservation fees for the direct train. Does this seem right? Or am I going the wrong route about booking my reservations?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
-FoB.
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There is a high speed train from Amsterdam to Paris, the TGV I think. Its just really expensive even with your discount from the Eurail pass.
There should be normal trains that do the same route but take a lot longer. I travelled Amsterdam to Paris a couple summers ago on Bastille day, it was quite busy (standing room only) presumably because it was Bastille day but didn't cost me anything extra.
On many trains I don't recall making any reservations. You just got on and sat down wherever and then showed your eurail whenever the person checking tickets would come around and they would initial it. However ahead of time you are supposed to fill out at the bottom of the pass with the date that you are travelling. So lets say I'm planning to travel on the 30th of August, before I get on the train I just fill in that date in the bottom section.
Some trains you definitely had to make reservations though, sometimes there was a slight fee of a fee euros. But yeah, those high speed trains through France will cost you an arm and leg in addition to the Eurail pass. I managed to travel from the Netherlands to Paris, to Carcassone, to Barcelona, and then back to Frankfurt without paying anything extra in fees or perhaps only a few euros.
I think the documentation included with the pass would indicate which trains required reservations, which required extra money, etc.
Often the people at the train station were quite helpful unless it was a country where English was iffy (Poland, Czech, etc).