Spudsie

My husband and I have our honeymoon planned for the first 2 weeks of May. We are planning to visit London, Paris and Amsterdam (my first trip to Europe, his second). Can anyone tell me (about) how much train tickets cost between those cities, we might want to stop in Brussels, too. I just want to make sure we have enough when we get there, all the research online I've done makes it seem so expensive. Thanks for your help. I can't wait to go!

yk

Are you flying into London and out of Amsterdam?

London->Paris, book directly from Eurostar.com for best prices. The sooner you book, the more discount fares you can find.

Paris->Amsterdam via Thalys. You can try www.tgv-europe.com, and make sure you select GREAT BRITAIN as your country of residence. That will ensure the webpage stays in English. You may be lucky to find some discount tickets as well, but again the sooner you book, the cheaper the tickets are.

You will pay the most if you wait to buy your tickets when you arrive at the train station.

Spudsie

Thanks for the tip. We have a round trip flight out of London. So from Amsterdam we have to get back to London to fly home.

nukesafe

If you can change your tickets to an open jaw -- into London, and out of Amsterdam, it could save you all that lot time in backtracking, and even enough on train fares to pay for the change charge on your air tickets.

Enjoy your honeymoon!

yk

See if you can change your plane ticket to fly home from Amsterdam.

If not, here's what I would suggest:

Fly into London.
Book a flight from the London airport you arrived into, to fly into Amsterdam right away on the same day.

Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris

Eurostar from Paris to London

Fly home from London

Sarastro

Following yk's suggestion will save you a lot of valuable vacation time lost to needless backtracking and might actually save you money.

Eurostar tickets are sold 120 days in advance of travel. TGV tickets are available 90 days in advance of travel. The earlier you book, the better the choice of seats and the less you'll pay.

If you can book in French, I recommend this site:

www.voyages-sncf.com

Many people have good luck booking here:

http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?

TimS

If you book your Paris-Amsterdam Thalys train ride at www.tgv-europe-com, in addition to choosing Great Britain as your country of residence you must also choose it as the country in which you will retrieve your tickets. If you leave France as the default country, you will get a booking page in French. Book as soon as the 90-day window opens to have any chance of getting a Smoove fare (€25). If you get that fare, print the tickets yourself. If you get another fare, you can pick up your tickets at any SNCF station in France even though you selected Great Britain earlier in the process. The 2nd class walk-up fare is €110 so it pays to book ahead.

Since none of your routes includes Germany, you will NOT be able to book on the bahn.de site.

If you can't change your plane ticket to fly home from Amsterdam and you want to visit London first, another way to travel between Amsterdam and London is to go by train-ferry-train. There is both a daytime route and an overnight route which would save you the cost of a night in a hotel. For more information, go here: http://www.seat61.com/Netherlands.htm.