This is our trip plan- landing in paris, taking a train to switzerland. 5 days switzerland exploring. Train to rome. 3 days in rome. Train to paris. 3 days in paris. Back home. We figured the first or second class eurail 3 country pass will be the cheapest option. Are we right? Are there any hidden costs? (wer\'e late on the discounted point to point tickets, the trip is on the begining of august) thank you.
Reply to this Hello Chananel 😊
They charge surcharges for things like sleeper cars and fast trains. If you are happy to take the regular trains and sleep in a seat on night trains, I think the main price of the ticket will cover everything.
Mel
Reply to this We used the 2nd class East Europe Pass in April. Along with the pass they also charged extra for reservations which came in handy a few times. Second class was comfortable and no smoking was allowed. Our initial departure, where we needed to validate the pass, I produced the passes and the agent indicated I needed the covers which I had detached to save space in my money pouch. Luckily, I had kept them in a backpack. Later, I looked through the pages of fine print and found nothing about keeping the covers. Read the fine print as it appears almost any reason can be used to confiscate them Overall, we enjoyed the trains and found that even local connecting trains were covered as long as we traveled just the 5 days allowed on the pass. Good Luck. Don Key
Reply to this Thank you, that was really helpful!
What I'm really concernd about is the price of the rom-paris train, for instance. A friggin' 130$! Do I HAVE to pay that? How do I get from rome to paris with the pass only?
Reply to this Wish I knew, but I don't. If you call RailEurope be sure to ask if entire cost is included with the pass. You might check bus/coach passes or single tickets.
Reply to this Remember even if you have the Eurail pass you still need to reserve seats in Italy. From memory 30 euros per person is the cost to reserve and is compulsory.
Reply to this To my understanding, you will have to pay the $130 to ride into Paris. My brother and I had to pay $130 for the Thalys train from the Frankfurt airport station. Needless to say, we were not at all happy to pay the extra charge on top of our three country pass. We were also charged a 20 Euro tariff on the same train for having to take a route -- which seemed to be unavoidable -- that included a country that was outside of our plan - so a $300 first-class Eurorail pass quickly turned into $400+. And the surcharges didn't stop there.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way around it. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
The one thing that I didn't enjoy about the Eurorail was all the hidden fees that we occurred along the way. You have to really meticulously plan to ensure that you don't encounter a number of unexpected charges - the rail people will flat out charge you additional fees on the spot while the train is in transit and you have little choice but pay if you want to get to your desired destination.
Good luck.
Reply to this I have found 2 web sites for european rail. within each site I think I understand my options. What is the difference betweem EuRail and Rail Europe. the options with in each site are similar. is EuRail easier to wrok with than Rail Europe? Thanks in advance.
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