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Hello,

I have an Interrail pass to travel in Portugal, with the intention of travelling in May. As I like to plan early, I was looking at potential train routes to travel around the country. I looked on the Rail Planner app to see how I’d book the routes I want, but it stated that a reservation was required. I then checked on the Interrail website and saw that for Portugal, reservations have to be booked locally at the train station. The questions I have are:

  • Would I be charged extra for the reservation (it’s a first class pass so I hope not)?
  • Is this definitely the only way of doing reservations (given that we’re still in Covid times, it’s odd that online reservations isn’t an immediate option)?

Many thanks

Reservations in Portugal are 5 EUR, see this list, which also states they can only be done locally.

There is a HIGHer surcharge for the (very, very few) Alfa-Pendoline trains, these are easy to avoid.

IC-trains run on the major lines as fast trains and for these its 5€/trip/seat. easy to do when there. All newbees seem to fear that trains are booked solid weeks advance-in practice they are so mistaken that that train is not even open for REServation.

Sometimes you can even avoid that fee by using slower local/regionais trains and on minor sidelines these will be the only trains that run. The planner for the source=cp.pt, will tell it all.
note that the current railnetwork is rather limited, but it can bring you to most towns where tipical tourists want to go. It mostly runs north-south close by the coast with a few inland branches.

Around Lisboa the local trains/stops are only accessible with a local chipcard (50 cts-via viagem), and access with a pass is very often very complicated-easy when the counter is staffed, sometimes impossible if not. But these are just short local trips-using a passday for these trips is throwing money out of the window.

There is a HIGHer surcharge for the (very, very few) Alfa-Pendoline trains, these are easy to avoid.

What is your source for that?

Here I also see the same reservation fees for IC and Alfa Pendular:

https://rail.cc/interrail-train-reservation/portugal/pt

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