Hi! This is my first post in the community. Please forgive me for not introducing myself, I am in need of desperate advice! Thank you in advance to whoever is kind enough to help out :)
Basically, my girlfriend and I are travelling around Europe for a month and 10 days. Starting 9 October, we will be in Slovenia for roughly 10-12 days and then from there will begin using our pass (let's say 20/21st of October). The pass that we are looking at is the 10 days in 2-month pass (Eurail).
The countries that we would like to visit (and in order) are Italy, Spain, France*, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Poland*, Hungary*, and Slovenia/Croatia. We return to Slovenia as our flights are from Zagreb, Croatia. Countries with a “*” are ones that we may/or may not visit depending on whether we have enough travel days.
A breakdown of possible dates:
21 October - Trieste to Parma
22-24 October - We may want to use a travel day to see Pisa and Florence
25 October - Parma/Pisa to Barcelona (this looks like a long trip)
27 October - Barcelona to Tafalla (we meet friends here who will take us to Bilbao and we can either return with them to Tafalla or go from Bilbao)(considering paying a reservation fee as it is not too bad)
30/31 October - Bilbao/Tafalla to Amsterdam (this trip is long and that's why we considered maybe going through France, but I understand that France is very busy now for the World Cup Rugby and in general)
5/6 November - Amsterdam to Wolfsburg
12/13 November - Berlin to Prague
These are our main travel destinations. I was wondering how possible these destinations will be on our chosen rail pass. We are trying to do this on a budget, and seat reservations are looking like they might be a real pain. Would it be possible to do our travels without making seat reservations? We are fine with taking slower and longer routes, but then again longer routes will take more time and might negatively affect us and our pass usage as it will result in more travel days… And if these trips are possible without reservations, how likely are we to be able to even get a seat on them in the first place?
I know it is very last minute to be worrying about such things. Planning in advance would have been a lot more helpful - but I only recently found out about the importance of seat reservations, especially in countries like Italy, France, and Spain. I assumed that the pass gave me access to any train I wanted, but you know what they say about assumptions… It’s also last minute to consider flying as I’ve seen some of the prices and they are quite high. We have also considered buses, but if I’m being honest, it sounds way more comfortable on a train.
One last question: I have not bought a pass yet but I was wondering, when I use the RailPlanner app, are the seat reservation prices that I’m seeing the same as the ones that a person with a pass would see? Or am I seeing inflated prices etc.
Thank you to anyone who might have some advice.
Tim
