Looking to book from Stuttgart to Interlaken and then Interlaken to Paris and Paris to London UK.
Trying to book on Rome 2 Rio but it doesn’t give me an option to use my eurail pass on the website. Any suggestions on other sites to use to book my tickets with my eurail pass?
(I have not yet bought eurail pass because I’m not sure how it works when booking tickets)
Best answer by thibcabe
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Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days.
Planning
The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries.
Reservations
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website. You can look at the guide in the link:
https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105
If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.
Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.
Activation of pass
During the activation process you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity.
It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.
Activation of travel day
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.
Stuttgart - Interlaken (4.50€) : bahn.de (no booking fee). Optional reservation
Interlaken - Paris : do not take the cross-border TGV Lyria (37€ seat reservation), instead take the TGV within France in Mulhouse or Strasbourg (limited 10€, then 20€). Doesn't take much longer, max. 30 min. eurail.com
Paris - London (30€) : eurail.com (2€ booking fee per person) OR https://www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass#TravelWish (4€ per order). Eurostar sells out weeks in advance.
Don't hesitate to ask here for advice.
The Eurail Pass is your ticket. Simply board any train and find a free seat. You only need to add mandatory seat reservations on most high-speed trains.
Is it safe to say that you can just go to the train station and most trains will have seats available? Or is it better ot book seats in advance on most trains?
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Is it safe to say that you can just go to the train station and most trains will have seats available? Or is it better ot book seats in advance on most trains?
Usually you are fine to book seats at the station few days in advance how ever the most popular Services like Eurostar London to France/Belgium/Netherlands, Thalys between Germany/Netherlands/Belgium & France, TGV From France to Spain/Italy have just few seats for Railpassholders that can be sold out weeks in advance :/
On Nighttrains you may cant find your prefered comfort level anymore (sometimes just seats are left) Flexibility works both ways ;) You have to be flexible with the trains you can catch :)
It heavily depends. Sometimes you cannot book seats, for example in Belgium and Netherlands. Regional trains never have reservations.
Eurostar to London (and Thalys) sell out weeks in advance.
TGV can sell out on weekends and holidays a few days in advance.
For most other trains reservations are optional and you can simply board the train.
Reservations in Switzerland are a waste of money and shouldn't be done. Trains are frequent and have lots of capacity.
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