Over the weekend, I purchased two (5 day in 1 month) InterRrail passes for August and reserved seats on trains to and from Barcelona via Paris. In total, this has cost €900 and, alarmingly, AI has suggested that buying individual advance tickets (with mandatory seat reservations) might actually have been cheaper! What do you think; does this sound expensive to you? N.B. The InterRail passes were c. €600 and 8 seat reservations (in and out of Paris both ways) were c. €300.
When will it be cheaper to just by advance tickets and seat reservations?
In countries with expensive seat reservations(France,italy, spain) the interrail pass(especially the short ones) is often not the cheapest option compared to cheap unflexible tickets bought a while in advance.
But you have to do the math yourself to find out whats the best option for you.
Expensive . . . yes. Unfortunately some carriers charge particularly high passholder supplements.
You could go on to other industry sites (bahn.de) for example and get regular online prices for the dates you plan on traveling to get an idea of whether the pass is good or bad value in this case.
I just picked a “random” date in June and was quoted €139 per person one way from Paris to Barcelona. If this is more or less the average price then you might expect to pay ~€1,100 for 8 of these legs. If you are traveling at peak time you might pay significantly more. Off peak . . . less.
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