Jessica Kaplan

Travelling to Paris and Italy in Sept. and October. In all, we will also be taking trains from Paris to Avignon, Avignon to Venice, Venice to Florence, and Florence to Rome. We are fairly set on the days we will move between cities. Even though the point-to-point tickets are slightly less expensive, is it worth the convenience to get a pass? What then do we need to do in terms of reserving seats? <BR> <BR>Thanks! <BR> <BR>Jessica

Judy

Jessica, there have been several recent postings about train travel that will help you. In the box above that says "text search" enter "reserve seats" then click "match exact phrase" and hit the "find" button. I just did this and it brought up more than 50 matches. Lots of discussions about whether to buy ahead or not, reserving seats and waiting in lines. Some people have not had a problem with lines, but others have. With luck you can discover whether others have had problems in the cities you'll be visiting.

Don

Whichever way you go-I'd ride the Eurostar trains and they require reservations and have assigned seats. They are faster and very nice with dining car, etc. in first class. See a travel agent, they can get your resv. etc. or go to raileurope.com

Saemus

Jessica - <BR>you can determine if there is a cost advantage by calculating the total point-to-point fares and comparing to what a pass would cost. Remember that with a pass you may still need to pay a supplement and/or "reservation fee" for some trips. Have you tried visiting www.raileurope.com? The site can give you info on schedule and fares.

Walter

Hi Jessica, I would pass on the Passes. The fastest and most expensive Eurostar trains with suppliments & seat reservations will cost you for Venice-Florence-Rome 1st class is ~$74US and 2nd is ~$48 (282,500L & 177,200L). So with a more expensive pass you'll still have to stand in line to reserve seats and/or buy suppliments. But if you want to avoid the train station buy the tickets for both legs at a travel agency go to www.fs-on-line.com/ click-on "English" and click-on "Agencies" then do the map/area click-ons for Venice. Or as others have stated in the past go to the American Express Office in Venice, the travel agencies (they will speak English) and AmEx will charge a small surcharge and reserve seats. For the train schedules on the fs-on-line website just click-on "Timetables" and use Roma, Firenze, and Venezia, put in the date and delete and leave blank the "Hours" & "Min" windows. HTH Regards, Walter <BR>

Walter

Opps! My Lira prices are wrong make it 1st-154,500L & 2nd-97,700L <BR>