Train Reservations
 

We have a purchased a Eurail pass for our June trip to France. Should we make our train reservations for travel on the TVG and an overnight train prior to leaving for France or is better to make the reservations after arriving. If we need to make them prior to leaving, who is the best service for doing this?<BR><BR>Thank you.

bump

We were sorry we hadn't made train reservations in advance for France and Spain in March-April. We purchased our passes from Rick Steves and a rep at his office assured me we wouldn't need reservations, but that caused a lot of problems for us. I don't know how you can get the reservations in advance, and some people claim you don't need them, but I'd check with the place you bought the passes from and see if they can make them for you. I wish we had!<BR>Good luck,<BR>Paula

You will need reservations on the TGV. You can ask your travel agent or wait until you are in France and call the SNCF.<BR><BR>Reservations with Eurail passes, from my experience, cannot be made online, but since they are mandatory on TGV trains, you must make them (or have your hotel make them) by telephone. Their local number from France is 0 892 35 35 35 (about 0,50 Euro per minute)... The people at SNCF, if at all, speak very little English!

I believe you can make just reservations through Raileurope if you have a pass already, but they charge quite a bit--you'll have to check their charges and see if they are per person or how they add up. It may not be obvious but there is a choice for reservations only at the bottom of any particular itinerary you look at on their site. I haven't used them for that so cannot recommend.

Hi Frank.<BR>We bought our train pass from our travel agent who wrestled us to also book reservations on ALL fast trains. <BR>We will be traveling late May- mid June.<BR><BR>I do not know where she made the reservations from.. but I know raileurope had something on their web site about reservation.<BR>Good luck.