Traveling from Barcelona to Rome for three weeks in June with 2 adults, 2 pre-teens. Would like to train in Spain and Italy, some France and rent a car for a few days in France. How do I figure out cheapest option when June is too far out to get accurate rail/price information?

Thanks!

For anyone wanting to rent a few days of car and largely train be sure to investigate the Eurail Select/Drive Pass - which starts with a minimum of five days unlimited travel over a two-month period - a so-called flexipass and 2or 3 days of unlimited car travel and you can, at time of purchase, buy more train and or car days. Idea for folks renting a few days - pick up at any train station and drop off at any train station within that country - thru Avis or Hertz and includes all VAT, mandatory insurance, etc. There are a variety of car sizes to chose from. Eurail Select Pass lets you pick the countries you want it to be valid in - in your case a 3-country one in Spain, France and Italy. Kids under 12 get 50% off on the passes and adults on the same pass - a Saverpass get about a 20% discount over two single passes. I always refer two great sites for any European train travel - www.ricksteves.com and www.budgeteuropetravel.com - 2 sites that give a ton of objective info as well as the usual pass prices that many sites seem only to give. The latter lets you download their free and excellent IMO European Planning & Rail Guide that is a great primer for novices on planning a european rail trip - pass or not or indeed even if not going by rail.They also operate a free info phone line where experts answer any questions - hard to find these days - a very unusual operation. www.raileurope.com is the official outlet of passes in the U.S. and has all the car-drive passes outlined.

To price point-to-point tickets, use www.renfe.es for Spain, www.voyages-sncf.com for France, and www.trenitalia.com for Italy. Enter a date between today and 13 December. New European timetables will go into effect on 14 December and not all sites have completed loading those timetables.

FYI, there will be another timetable update that will take effect in mid June.

Thanks so much for your advice PalenQ and Tim S.
Very much appreciated.

when June is too far out to get accurate rail/price information?>

Rail prices will be about the same in June as they are now - just go to the sites TimS mentions and plug in a day for the next few weeks and prices will guaranteeably be the same in June - perhaps with minor variations. But they are not like plane tickets, whose pricing is subject to many factors and can vary wildly from year to year.

Railpass prices also should be the same about - they go up a few bucks and down a few bucks due to the value of the dollar vis-a-vis the Euro. Yesterday Eurailpass prices actually declined a bit due to the rising dollar.

so prices for trains (and cars too i'd say) will be about the same now as in June - no high-season prices on trains, etc. but a standard year-round pricing.