OK last question about this part of the trip, I promise!

I've read many threads on this and it says reservations not possible, just hop on any train. Does this mean we can't buy the tickets ahead of time either, or just not the reserved seating?

What are the chances that on a Tuesday morning, the 9:06 am train will be full if I don't have a ticket????

Sorry, so confused!

bookmarking, too many conflicting sites and info, so I'll follow along and see what you get.

We did Bruges to Lille last year. All we did was go to the train station, buy the tickets and get on the train. The train were on had no reserved seating. There was plenty of room on our train; I would not worry about it.

My understanding is that the regular trains (not Thalys) in Belgium DO NOT have seat reservations, so in a sense, a train won't sell out.

Oh, which means that even though the train won't be sold out, there's a chance the train will be full and you won't get a seat. But I don't think that happens often.

Update:

I ended up booking the tickets (Paris-Lille-Bruges-Lille-Paris) through the SNCF website. I got all PREM fares except for one, so the tickets can just be picked up in Paris. Not a problem since we have more than a week before to move on to Bruges and if there are problems, I can hopefully get them sorted out before we leave.

Again, this has not been an easy task to book, but I did learn a lot about the rail system in Europe!

Thanks for all the help!!