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Seat reservations in the Netherlands and Belgium

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Hi there,
I am about to plan an Interrail-Trip with my family through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain next summer. As seat reservations are really extraordinary expensive, we would like to skip them as often as possible. In the Netherlands and Belgium we will have some shorter journeys mainly up to one 45 minutes or one hour in an Intercity. Are trains in the Netherlands and Belgium normally crowded or shouldn’t it be a problem to fine some seats? We well be travelling late morning hours on weekdays and weekends.
Thanks for your help

Johannes

Best answer by BrendanDB

Indeed + it’s easy to avoid cross border High Speed trains between France - Belgium and the Netherlands, with their expensive seat reservation.

If you have concrete questions for your itinerary (don’t forget to mention travel date and times), feel free to ask.

 

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  • dennistd
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  • May 15, 2024

It isn't even possible to reserve seats on domestic trains in Belgium and the Netherlands 😉

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    NaJoFri
BrendanDB
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  • May 15, 2024

Indeed + it’s easy to avoid cross border High Speed trains between France - Belgium and the Netherlands, with their expensive seat reservation.

If you have concrete questions for your itinerary (don’t forget to mention travel date and times), feel free to ask.

 

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    NaJoFri
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  • NaJoFri
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  • May 15, 2024

Perfect, good to know. Thanks for your quick reply. And trains between the Netherlands and Belgium? We will be using a train from Rotterdam to Antwerp.

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  • NaJoFri
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BrendanDB wrote:

Indeed + it’s easy to avoid cross border High Speed trains between France - Belgium and the Netherlands, with expensive seat reservations.

If you have concrete questions for your itinerary (don’t forget to mention travel date and times), feel free to ask.

 

We wanted to continue to Lille via Kortrijk / Courtrai. There seems to be a TER-train from Kortrijk, so we can avoid those crazy French seat reservations.

BrendanDB
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NaJoFri wrote:

We wanted to continue to Lille via Kortrijk / Courtrai. There seems to be a TER-train from Kortrijk, so we can avoid those crazy French seat reservations.

 

Correct, (almost) hourly. The train couples in Kortrijk and continues as IC to Gent and Antwerp. So you don’t even need to change (usually, exceptions possible. listen well to the announcements or ask staff) in Kortrijk. In Antwerp you can take the hourly, non reservable IC to Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

If you want to go to Brussels, it’s more convenient to take a train to Tournai, to connect to ordinary IC to Brussels and beyond.

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    NaJoFri
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  • May 15, 2024

Perfect. Thanks so much for your help. 🤗

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