hello fellow travelers, I've read on many posts that going to the French train site is cheaper. But most of us speak only abit of French and would love a lesson on how to. Where on the site should we go to start looking for train times, costs and how to buy tix?
Thanks for all help!!
Dawn

This was written a while ago, but it may still help you.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34803732

When you open the rail site, try going into the url and making this change:
change LANG=FR to LANG=UK

The French rail site is:
www.voyages-sncf.com

The flags for changing language to English is conveniently located in the bottom left of the screen. Scroll down for it.

Hi D,

The latest version of www.voyages-sncf.com will send you to RailEurope if you choose English.

I use http://www.freetranslation.com/ to help me decipher foreign websites.

You will quickly pick up what "depart", "Arrivée", "retour", "continuer", etc mean.

Come back to this thread if you need help.

Follow what Travelnut suggested. Again, after you plugged in your departure and arrival cities, on the next page, change the FR to UK in the URL and you'll get the same webpage but in English.

Follow ira's advice. If you switch to English, you'll end up on the RailEurope website, without those cheaper seats you say you're looking for.

I successfully bought two sets of PREM (discounted) tickets on the SNCF website this past month.

I followed Travelnut's advice and changed LANG=FR to LANG=UK in the top address bar. It changes the page to English.
Do this when you get to the page where it offers you the different trains and prices (<i>after</i> you put in your destination and dates on the first page). It will come up in French, make the change listed above, and hit refresh. The page will the come up in English and will be in English going forward through the purchase process.

Clarification:

When using the SNCF site, if you

a. click on the English flag, you will be rerouted to RailEurope.

b. change the LANG from FR to UK, you will <b>remain on the SNCF site, but in English version</b>

Travelnut is right - I bought tickets recently following those instructions. If you click on the flag, you are redirected. I was able to get 17 Euro PREMS from Paris to Brive and print them. Very easy.

Kristina
Date: 09/09/2008, 09:12 am

HOORAY FOR YOU!!!!

Thanks for the tip.

HI TN,

&gt;b. change the LANG from FR to UK,

Do we do that as per Kristina, or is there another way?

Ira,
Don't thank me, thank Travelnut!

So, thanks Travenut!!

The best part of my SNCF buying experience was that my patience paid off.
I bought the first tickets (Paris-Angouleme) for 22 euro each. But the return was running about 47 euro each so I thought I'd wait and see if they would run any Prem fares. Then the price went up to 72 euro each! I really thought I'd blown it.

A couple of days later the price went down to 47 again and I put two tickets on hold. Did you know you could do that for up to a week?

The next day I got an SNCF email (in French) which said they were having a big promo through mid-October. I checked, and my tickets were now 19 euro each! Needless to say, I bought them ASAP. The next day, the price went up to 54 euro!

Basically, you can do it on the first page where LANG is in the url. It isn't there on the opening booking page (orig, dest, dates...), but I think it shows up on the next page (probably as Kristina is describing).

I've looked through the various threads on booking French train travel but I haven't seen my problem addressed. When I look at the schedule I see the trains I want but then when I click the button to purchase the tickets, it only shows me much later trains at much cheaper prices. I know my earlier more expensive choices can't be sold out because my travel is 90 days from now. It seems like it is automatically defaulting to the cheapest tickets on the days I wish to travel but yet I don't see any place where that default was selected. Any suggestions?

LouisaH - We may be able to help solve your problem IF you can tell us where you're traveling, when you're traveling, and which specific train you want to take.

Also, it'll be better if you start a new thread with this information than tag on to this old thread.

Thanks, yk. I'll start another thread. I tagged onto this one because I thought someone might just redirect me here if I had started a new one.

Book marking

I've put a step-by-step guide to using voyages-sncf.com in French, complete with screenshots, at www.seat61.com/France-trains.htm.

This has to be the most complete and best guide for using the SNCF site we have seen here in a long time.

Thank you, Man-in-Seat-61!!!!!!