My wife & 11 year old child are travelling through europe on a eurail pass this Christmas and have been told that seat reservations should be made during this peak period. We can make these reservations with our travel agent here in Australia but at $20 per person per reservation this will be an expensive exercise.

We will be traveling before Christmas to Munich, Salzburg & Vienna staying a couple of days in each city and then onto Venice for New Year and then onto Rome. We would appreciate it if anyone can advise if seat reservations are a must & if so what is the cheapest way of doing this.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Aussiefamily

Hi Aussie,

Before you buy the railpass go to www.railsaver.com and see if it will save you money.

My guess is that it will be cheaper for you to buy your tickets, with reservations, after you get to Europe.

We just travelled Germany to Paris to Italy and back. The reservations were a lifesaver. I appreciated knowing that I had a seat (in a non smoking area) and could specifically look for a certain car and seat location. It was more expensive, but well worth that expense up front. I don't know if you are doing any overnights, but I was thankful we had a private space to relax in between countries or cites as well. We spend less on food and more on travel and it worked wellfor us.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

aussiefamily

I think they would be a must during holiday season, and for some trains they really are required, not just a good idea. I don't know about your particular trains, though.

Is that 20 AUD? Because if so, that isn't really a bad rate for having a travel agent to it. It will be cheaper to do it in Europe, of course, as your agent is charging for doing it. I think I've paid about 5-8 euro within Europe for seat reservations, but haven't done it in Germany.

I paid US$11 per person per reservation in our Eurail Select Saver pass (1st class) when my wife and I travelled from Munich-to-Lyon-to-Madrid a week ago. I paid US$110 for the sleeper reservation for our Lyon-to-Madrid leg.

I felt that I could have easily made all reservations myself, and not incurred the Eurail reservation fees, had I gone in advance to the train station of our first city (Munich) . The train station was, after all, around the main tourist district. However, this was easy for me to consider because we travelled during what seems to be the non-peak period and the 1st class non-smoking coaches were only half-occupied.

When traveling with a Eurail Pass in Italy, we went to a couple of train stations to make reservations on trains and were astounded that the clerks had no idea what was or was not included. Although the pass said that no supplement was required for Eurostar trains, one wanted to charge us a small fortune to make a reservation from Bologna to Florence, insisting that there was a major surcharge as well as the reservation fee. I'd just do the $20 per person reservations and not worry about it, unless you really need to count pennies.