Please Help with Train Travel!!
 

Hi - Planning on visiting my daughter who is studying in the Netherlands. I'm sooo confused when it comes to planning the train travel between countries. We will be starting in Well, the Netherlands and taking a train to Paris, then to Luxemburg, to Brugge and finally back to the airport in Amsterdam. I've looked into the Euro rail passes, but keep hearing conflicting reports about whether to purchase before we leave or buy passes as we go. I also understand that even if you have the pass, you have to sometimes make a reservation and pay a fee.
This is the only part of the trip that is causing me a lot of stress!!! Any advice or help from some seasoned travelers would be so appreciated!
Thanks.

Others will respond so will top this for you.

You probably won't want or need a pass. Yes, sometimes you do need to make seat reservations; sometimes depending on which trains are used (in Europe) the seat reservation is built in...seat reservation charges are usually pretty inexpensive and the fact that you might need one is not the reason to skip a pass..but that's another story.

You can in many instances buy all of your tickets, make any seat reservations should they be required, etc., at the first rail station you use...relax, not nearly as stressful as it seems but of course, that's because a lot of us have done it before!

We visited our daughter who studied at Maastricht Univ. We loved the location and got by with buying train tickets as needed. Some of the placeswe went to were Aachen, germnay; Bruges, Brussels, Ghent and antwerpp Belgium. I don't remmber exact prices but the tickets were not expensive and we also recived some type of discount as our daughter had a student pass that allowed us discounts also.

I was confused at first about the trains too. The eurorail pass you buy is from a company, and covers most railroads. if you're traveling for a few weeks it's best to get a pass. The pass covers the basic fare, and in some countries such as ireland all of it. In Europe you have to pay extra for night trains, and fast trains. The pass also either covers ferries or gets you a 30% discount. But the cost is still alot less with the pass if you do much traveling. As for making the seat reservation, you can do that at the train station. If you have pass questions call the Raileurope company at 1-800-622-8600. If the person isn't helpful just call again and try a different person. That helped me alot. hope this helps!

From the cost angle, you can get some idea of what it cost to make reservations with a pass. Amsterdam to Paris is Thalys requiring reservation. Paris-Luxemburg is either totally or mostly by TGV, and also requires a reservation.

http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/pdfs/reservations.pdf

You can get some "idea" of point to point cost:

http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/france.cfm
http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/benelux.cfm

However, there are online discounts on Thalys and TGV if you book point to point tickets early.

I usually don't bother with a pass for this type of trip. It is hard to break-even and also less options to make seat reservations. I don't know if online sites such as www.voyages-sncf.com knows how to make a reservation for pass holders.

Since I am also planning a Paris to Amsterdam trip, I appreciate the info also.

Any suggestions on going from Paris to Reims and then to Amsterdam?

Forget passes.

Go to www.thalys.com (or www.nshispeed.nl) and book the high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam/Rotterdam to Paris. There are cheap fares if you pre-book.

Then go to www.voyages-sncf.com. Follow advice on www.seat61.com/France-trains.htm to leave in French, book a cheap deal from Paris to Luxembourg by direct high-speed TGV and collect at the station in Paris. Fares from around 30-40 euros. Can a pass plus booking fee plus postage plus reservation fee plus more booking fees compete with simply booking a 30 euro cheap ticket, no fees, no postage???

Luxembourg to Bruges needs no reservation and the price doesn't change, it's an hourly 'buy a ticket and hop on' journey, so leave that till you get there. www.b-rail.be will let you check prices if you need to.

Bruges-Brussels-Schiphol you have two choices, buy a ticket on the day and use the hourly Brussels-Schiphol InterCity train (no reservation, buy a ticket and hop on) or pre-book a faster high-speed Thalys (reservation obligatory, cheap fares if you book in advance.

Hi AD,

Have you considered flying into AMS and out of Paris?

Saves having to go back to AMS.

Airfare should be about the same price.

See www.kayak.com

Enjoy your visit.

Hi there and thank you all so much for the info. I have a lot of websites to checkout - thanks to you all. We did check flying out of Paris and it was significantly cheaper to fly in and out of the same airport. We're doing a kind of "loop"!