We are planning a trip to France and for a number of reasons desire to travel only by train--no buses/tour vans. Would be interested in what areas work well and do not work well for travelling in France exclusively by train.

I have not done that much train travel in France but here are my views. <BR>Base yourself in some cities (Paris, etc) and do daytrips to see the area, to eliminate a lot of time wasted on <BR>packing/unpacking, checkin/checkout, not to mention dragging luggage through stations, up and down stairs, on and off trains, etc. <BR>When you do move on to another city <BR>(I went to Avignon and Arles, for two examples)you will thank yourself constantly if you have packed light and have kept your luggage weight to a minimum. For short trips perhaps you can store your luggage in a hotel or station parcel room, and just take with you what you will need for a short excursion, <BR>For French train service, go to : <BR>http://voyages.sncf.fr/ <BR>http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/ <BR>tgvindex.html tgv trains info <BR> <BR>also, <BR>www.raileurope.com <BR>

Fodors <BR> <BR>I agree with Elaine that you'd do well to look for places from which you can make excursions. <BR> <BR>For Normandy Argentan or Surdon are good centres. <BR>ForBrittany Rennes <BR>For the Bordelais Bordeax, of course, or perhaps Perigeaux <BR>For the Massif Central Figeac or Albi <BR>For the Lyonnais Lyon <BR>For Burgundy Dijon <BR> <BR>You can see levels of service if the reference libary of a city near you has the Thomas Cook European Timtable. You can see what places are like if you use http://www.yahoo.com and enter, for example, "Perigeaux travel", and if that fails "Perigeaux voyages". <BR> <BR>Please write if I can help further. <BR> <BR>Ben Haines, London <BR> <BR>

Dear Casey, <BR> <BR>There's an excellent paperback called "France by Train" or something similar, with wonderful train itineraries for every region of France. I recommend it highly.

I've done lots of train travel in France, and almost everywhere is train-accessible; the majority of the few areas that are not can be reached by bus. That leaves remote villages that can be reached by hiking or hired car. <BR> <BR>I've done both the base city with day trips, and moving every couple of days. Both are ok - I travel light so moving from hotel to hotel is no big deal; basing in one city gives you more versatility and a chance to see one small area up close. <BR> <BR>www.sncf.com is the french railroad website. In addition, train stations have schedules for the routes it serves in little fold up pieces of paper; the train station personnel can also give you schedules (unless you're buying a ticket, head for the special "informations" booth or the window that says "informations", rather than the 'billets' window). <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>

I just returned from France and did the trip by train using Europass. I was pleased. The trains are on time and were not crowded [my pass was First Class]. Basing yourself in a well connected town like Paris or Avignon is a good idea. There is so much to see in France by train. The possibilities are limitless. I was able to use local buses where the train did not go. Do lots of research before you go and you will have more fun. I found it worthwhile to look at the schedules available in the train stations before I asked questions. Good Luck on your journey.

I've had no luck trying to get a schedule from Paris to Brussels via a Thalys or rapde train on sncf site. The site keeps sending me back and forth. All I want is a schedule for July and general cost. Any help.

Thalys has its own website- <BR> <BR>http://www.thalys.com <BR> <BR>Good luck.

Thomas: <BR> <BR>At the www.sncf.com site, I always stay in the french version and had no trouble getting a Paris a Bruxelles timetable. I remember trying the english version at one point a long time ago and having no luck, so I stick to the french version. <BR> <BR>www.raileurope.com also has timetables. <BR> <BR>

I've traveled a fair bit about France by train and think it works well in most areas if it's your first trip and thus just want to see the main highlights. I think the area with least train routes and accessibility is the SW and Central areas but that's probably not where you want to go, anyway. I haven't done Brittany, though, so can't really speak to that, I know the main cities there certainly have stations. Even in areas that people usually say you should have a car (ie, Loire, Provence), I've done it all by train and seen plenty of stuff for a trip of a few days to a week or so. I agree if you wanted to see Provence in depth, you would want a car for the smaller towns, but it's easy to get from Avignon to, say, Nimes, Arles, Aix, Marseilles, Montpellier, and then on to Nice where it's easy to get to most coastal cities (Antibes, Monaco, Cannes) but not a few others like St-Tropez or Grasse, but that's why I said it depends on your desires. Even for the chateaux country, if it's your first trip, there are quite a few chateaux you can get to by train (Amboise, Blois) -- well, actually if you won't use a bus the Loire is probably not so good as that's best for some of them like Chenonceau. I've stayed in Strasbourg, also, and there's a lot you can see there by train -- Colmar, Nancy, even Reims, Mulhouse. Ditto for Lyon. I think maybe your criteria of refusing to take a bus may be limiting you and that you may not realize what you're doing -- regular buses are common for some smaller towns, busses and tour vans are two separate things. You can't get to St-Remy, for example, except by bus or Grasse or some of the chateaux, etc, and St-Remy is worth a visit if you're in that area a while. <BR> Re the train site, I was just helping someone on that route yesterday and found schedules and prices without any problem, but I also looked in the French section -- I don't know schedules all day except that have departures from Paris at 7:55 am and 9:55 am, I know that and the trip is about 1-1/2 hrs, and costs about 350F 1-way second class (I was pricing to Bruges which goes through Brussels and it was 359F second class). For some reason Raileurope refused to give that schedule and rate yesterday, don't know why. I would presume there are trains every couple of hours all day. I would suspect that you can't get a schedule for July because it isn't available get, I think French rail schedules change at end of May and often sites don't have June and later up until May or so. For planning, use current schedules, they probably won't be that different. Raileurope won't have them for July, either, I'll bet and they don't list every run which is why I don't like them for specifics, but they are fine for generalities such as elapsed time and very broad idea of cost (which is marked up some). I think the guidebook someone else was referring to is "Daytrips in France" by Earl Steinbicker; it is excellent, I'd also recommend it.

It's actually called "Fodor's France by Train" by Simon Vickers, but I checked Amazon and it's out of print. It's a great book though, and I'd even try an out-of-print service or perhaps the library.