No, AFAIK its purely random- (well, with the usual rules that nearly all railways use-to prevent only having sold all window seats and non @ aisle)-I think IF you are so determined at that you have to go in person to a FR counter. And by far not all TGV are DoSto=double deck (thats the german abbreviation) Plenty of DoSto also in DE=Germany even on quite scenic routes and Swiss, eve locals without any chance to REServe Interestingly I have now booked a double-deck TGV on a 10-Euro reservation, and it has given me an upper deck ticket! Fingers crossed for the second one, when reservations become available :-o
Yes, there is a phone number for the German service but it says that they have to post you out the paper reservation, so there might not be time, depending when you’re going in July. Why not give them a call and ask how long it takes to arrive by post?
Search the forums using “Spain reservations” for the answer, there are various options (via Swiss or Germans railways for example) but none of them are very convenient unfortunately!!
@cyberbub There is a small section here in the Community where some experienced travelers post current problems/issues, wrong or missing informations on the websites. But it looks like actual the maintarget of Eurail is to solve the high income of CustomerSupport Requests. As i havent seen one of the Community Managers recently online and if just shortly :)@rvdborgt post atleast once per week something in this section Yes, it’s fair that they are focusing on the customer support requests. But by fixing 2 or 3 key technical problems, they would have a lot fewer customer support requests! :-)
Normal tickets in Spain include a reservation wherever possible. Not sure what the 8€ would be for, maybe to choose your seat? Yes that’s what it says…”Selecciona tu asiento”... isn’t “choosing your seat” a reservation?
Mad-Bcn has AVE fast trains ev hour-even a few more in the peaks, If you can have the least bit of some flexibility, I really see not much problems. Plus there are also now 2 competing low-cost others (not taking passes-but their fare might be cheaper as use a passday); OuiGo and AVLO with a 3d promised to come. THE main bottleneck are the 2/day very long-dist trains Bcn-Andalucia-as each&any newbee seems determined to use those. The reason for the method is with a tiny little bit of thinking (money!) easy to understand: otherwise the whole world would book seat only and ´forget´ to also pay for the ticket. Thats why Tr-It and SNCF have withdrawn this method RENFE also offers its own Spain RailPass-all virtual, which includes free REServ-as they manage the whole booking process. Thanks mcadv. I’ve looked at the RENFE Spainpass but it costs as much as an Interrail!I believe that SNCF still allow Interrail reservations online, for all French domestic routes which allow Interrail. I
PS the above is my understanding, I recommend doing your own research of course!
So in summary, if you want to go Lisbon - Madrid - Barcelona with a Eurail pass:Using 1 day of your pass travelling Lisbon - Madrid: 3 trains, just jump on the train at Lisbon Santa Apolonia Station (no reservation), change at Entroncamento (no reservation), change at Badajoz with a couple of hours’ wait until the 16:45 train to Madrid (which runs every day except Saturday) - this will allow you time to make your Spanish reservation at the Badajoz station ticket office before the train departs.You should even be able to make your onward reservations for your high-speed train from Madrid to Barcelona for a later date, in the ticket office in Badajoz. Alternatively you can make them at any station’s ticket office in Madrid after you arrive.I hope this is useful. Happy travels!
The only thing I would add is that Venice is one of those very few cities where the ‘other’ train station (Mestre) is a long way from the city, it’s 5 miles away on the mainland. The train station in Venice itself is Santa Lucia. But a lot of tourists find that accommodation on the mainland is much less expensive, so stay there and just ‘commute’ the 5 miles and back by train, each day they visit Venice itself.
Listen to what user ‘rvdborgt’ says, I would suggest! He seems very knowledgeable and provides useful links for verification.As for your question about multiple train stations, in most major European cities all the train stations are quite close to the city centre. Certainly not more than a mile (or absolute max two miles) out. Remember that the reason there are multiple stations is that in the 1850-1900 period there were multiple competing train companies which all built their own stations… but they still wanted them in the city centre! And of course the cities at that time were usually smaller than today - so stations which might have been on the edge of the city centre in 1850 would be pretty much bang in the centre today! So you don’t need to worry about basing yourself around any particular station to see the sights… Just jump on a bus or Metro if you need to take short journeys - or take a taxi… or walk, and enjoy the city atmosphere...It seems that the Spanish railway system/res
Yes that all sounds logical - thanks again!The Spanish railway booking (and timetable) system, and RENFE website are shockingly complicated, inefficient, inaccurate, and user-unfriendly, considering it’s the 2020s…. I bet it was easier in the 1920s!
Thanks vey much for your detailed answer!I had seen another post on these forums, which said that reservation fees for AVE trains could be up to E40! I’m glad that’s not true…. Great to hear also that there are no Interrail quotas in Spain!So if I want to take a trip in Spain which has a connection, I have to either (a) make sure there is at least an hour between connections for me to run to the ticket office on the connecting station, or (b) book on the RENFE telephone line…. Can you clarify whether if I book on the phone, I can collect the reservations at *any* station… so I could collect the reservations for *both* ‘legs’ of the journey, at the *first* station… and then I could allow myself shorter connection times??Thanks again.
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