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Hello, 

 

My friend and I are travelling in Europe next week. We purchased the 5 day mobile travel pass. Here is our itinerary:

 

London to Paris 6/10

Paris to Nice 6/13

Nice to Milan 6/17

Milan to Rome (found tickets and seat reservation complete)

 

We are unable to find any available tickets for the first three trips. These all require seat reservations and we are unsure if these are required or sold out or how to go about this. Are we able to purchase these seats at the desk or will they be sold out by then? Any insight and advice will be helpful as this is our first time travelling in Europe. Thanks!

Hello,

London to Paris is already sold out.

Paris to Nice is available, but not every class in every train that’s running and not always the cheapest reervations (which are 10 € per person).

Nice to Milan: available. In general you’d need to reserve just the italian trains (if you managed to reserve Milano to Roma: it works the same way; border point to Italy is Ventimiglia, where you need to change trains anyway; but there are also options without reservation).

The problem is that you didn’t provide your class of travel or exact times. But if you need help with a specific train, just ask.

For sure it is possible to reserve at a ticket counter when arrived. But if you have a fixed itinerary, it’s indeed risky. 


Thank you so much for the response!

 

Do you have any recommendations for getting from London to Paris. 

 

We have airbnbs booked at each of these places so ideally we would like to leave in the morning or afternoon if possible for Paris and Nice. We booked the 5 day pass for 2nd class. Also to book Paris and Nice, we need a pass cover number. I reached out to customer service for this but is there a faster way to get this?


The reservation from Paris to Nice you should be able to book by phone at SNCF. No need of Pass Cover Number. 

https://www.sncf.com/en/customer-service/contact-us/telephone

 Press #85 for English, no booking fees, reservations are sent via e-mail.

 


Thank you so much for the response!

 

Do you have any recommendations for getting from London to Paris. 

Your options are:

You may leave a day later for Paris. 

You may buy a regular ticket for the train from London to Paris (but that’s quite expensive).

You may go by bus. But that’s a much longer journey (about 9 hours).

You may go by train and ferry. That’s much longer, too, but you may find this trip interesting.

You may fly.  

If you’d like to have further advice about one of these options, just ask.

 


 

You may go by train and ferry. That’s much longer, too, but you may find this trip interesting.

 

 

This option is currently not possible as the Ferry companies across the English Channel doesn´t allow any foot passengers. Only Passengers in Cars :/


The way to come around this (but not probably really practical for a USAer who still has to learn how to write dates in EUR-style): buy a 2nd hand bike. And give it to some poor soul on french soil-only after having used it to bike to SNCF-station, as there is also NO bus anymore!

There used to be 2 competing ferries Dover-Calis, but 1 has sacked all its employees and wanted to use cheaper Latino labourers, which led to the inevitable strikes and the giant Qs of >20 KMs with trucks-long live that brexit thing. Banning foot-pax was also for a long time due to covid.

Fly: the cheapo airls are RYANair and EasyJet- if youre not used to it, DO read all info extremely well, as they are full of utter complaints by ignorant non-readers about very high extra fees for things you ´forgot´ to add.

BUS; the green FLIX bus (they also bought the Greyhound some time ago).

For P→ Nice: there is also an overnite train with a kind of basic sleepers (couchette). In DAY there are just a very few TGV all the way_you can go ev hour till Marseille (much more chance on finding seats in quota) and then change to local TER-train=NO REServ even possible-same route along the mediterranean coast.

USA is well advised to search for all the unexpected long weekends and hols we have here in EUR-and they also vary per country (no, we do not 4/7).


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