My wife and I will be taking a train from Paris to Tours, renting a car, then return by train from Rouen to CDG.

I checked a sample fare on voyages-sncf.com, selecting France as the country, and the "senior" (me) or "prem" (my wife) fare was 36 euros. When I selected Etats-Unis, I was routed to raileurope.come and the fare was $58 in both cases (not counting delivery charges).

Roughly, at current exchange rates, 36 euros is no more than $45.

Is this differential typical?

Any advice from experienced hands on best way to buy these tickets?

Thanks!

-- Paul

I just bought my tickets from rail europe rather than SNCF because i wanted tickets in hand. I did not have to pay shipping as the amount was over a certain amount and was free. It probably cost 20 USD dollars more that way but on the SNCF site it was telling me to get the tickets from a kiosk when we arrived but did not want to deal with that.

I printed my PREM tickets .

Danon --

From which site did you purchase your tickets?

-- Paul

I always purchase from the SNCF site. No way I'm going to pay Rail Europe the inflated prices. If you buy a PREM ticket, you can print it out on your computer and have no reason to go to a kiosk to pick it up. Non-PREM tickets do require a trip to the cashier's box.

If you don't want to be rerouted to RailEurope say you're picking the tickets up in France. And use the site in French - train schedules aren't hard to figure out even if you don't read the language.

See www.seat61.com for detailed directions for booking tickets on Voyages-SNCF. Note that only PREM tickets can be printed at home.

If you're not comfortable booking in French, use

http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/

Select Great Britain as your home country throughout the booking process, then enter your billing address when supplying your credit card information.

With either, be SURE to phone the fraud department of your credit card company ahead of time and let them know of the purchase you plan to make so the charge is not blocked.

SNCF - not a problem at all.

...

Thanks for the advice. I am shopping for a RT ticket from Paris to Milan in September. I'm getting €55 each way for 2nd class youth, my daughter. That is on the TGV site. Is that the best deal? What is PREM? I didn't see that.

Danon, StCirq, djkbooks --

Got it! No problem navigating the SNCF site.

Thanks very much!

-- Paul

Raileurope are notorious for selling only the most expensive tickets and for adding things like reservation fees that are out of proportion to the actual cost (in some cases they charge reservation fees for trips that don't have reserved seats).

Stick to the SNCF site and continue as French, then ensure that you remove the insurance option which gives you the option to collect in France

spaarne, if you searched on the sncf site as indicated, and didn't see a PREM (basically a cheap ticket price) then it could be they don't offer any on that route or they are all taken.

The PREM you can just print out on your computer. The others you must decide to get from the train station (here at Fodors many posters tell you this won't be a problem. This did work fine for me for the Chunnel.)

We usually get the fare for families traveling with young children. We can't print these out. I have them mailed to my family in France.

I tried the voyages-sncf.com site. The best price is €72 one way. No PREM visible. The TGV site offers a lower fare, €55.

Such good points made here already, and we would just chip in with this article at http://webhe.eu/1t that recounts a tale of a leading US agent charging over 15 times as much for rail tickets as for the same tickets for exactly the same trains sold locally in Europe.

I always book on voyages-sncf and don't ever have to "select" anything about where I live, so I suspect that isn't what you did. YOu only do that if you insist they mail you tickets.

You select where you want to PICK UP the tickets, that's all. So why would you say the US?

Christina, you get that "where do you live" selection on the europe version of the sncf site (to use so you can see it in English).

I agree with St. Cirq, it's better to just use the French site. Try your search in the English site if that makes you feel more comfortable, then switch to the French.

I tend to buy the DECOUVERTE ENFANT+ tixs, so I have to either mail them or pick them up at the station (which I'm nervous about since I don't have a French credit card). They don't let you print them out.

christycruz, you don't need a French credit card to pick up tickets. They take Visa, Mastercard, and Amex. Just be sure when you pick them up you hand them the same cc you used to book with online.

Another source of help is the blog http://parisbytrain.com/tgv-tickets . It has an easy step-by-step guide in English to using the http://www.tgv-europe.com site, the source of SNCF high-speed train tickets.
Americans can choose Canada as the home base to avoid being bumped to RailEurope. Aside from lower prices, tgv-europe may offer promotions and seat allocations not found on Rail
Europe.

PREM tickets, by the way, are available well in advance but may not apply nearer to the day of travel.

Yes, I know you get it on tgv-europe.com but that isn't what the OP claimed he did. He claimed specifically that he bought them on voyage-sncf.com. Which is why I said he probably didn't do what he said he did. The site that asks that is NOT voyages-sncf.com, it's a TGV europe website.

Pardon me Christina, but I certainly DID do what I said I did:

"I checked a sample fare on voyages-sncf.com, selecting France as the country, ..."

I didn't "specifically" claim that I "bought" the tickets; I said I checked a sample fare. And, it was in fact on voyages-scnf.com; the actual URL is:
http://www.voyages-sncf.com/billet-t...t%20de%20train
I DID select France as the country and got the results I reported.
So, please be a bit more careful in your reading of others posts and a bit slower to make snippy assumptions about what posters probably did or didn't do, when you don't have all the facts.