Transportation planning is driving me crazy. The amount of research is overwhelming. I am thinking of buying point to point tickets instead of a pass as it seems cheaper if I get tickets in advance. I am under the assumption I would be able to pick up all the tickets in Spain or the departure city easily.

Going from: Madrid->Barcelona->Rome->Florence->Venice->Milan->Nice->Paris

I was just wondering for tickets ordered on renfe, thalys, voyages-sncf, etc, do they include seats reservations? Or would I need to separately purchase them?

Also I am not really sure if the order of the cities are good, trying to find the most efficient way to travel from Spain to France but going to Italy in between. Any suggestion would be great.

Thanks.

If you're going by train between Barcelona and Italy - a long long haul unless you break it up in such nice places as Avignon/Arles area and French riviera then a Eurail Select Pass will save you lots of money. If doing that by air then probably not. A pass simplifies the planning process and then you make required reservations locally for a few euro. 6-day or more Eurail Select passes bought before mar 31, 2006 get an extra day free and can be used for 6-8 months after purchase. You'd need a 3-country pass for Spain, France and italy - 5 days in 2 months costs $325 p.p. For prices on Eurail Select 2006 and many other passes: www.budgeteuropetravel.com - you can ask on the home page for their free European Planning & Rail guide which has lots of using trains for novices, rail maps, fare charts, etc. Click on the link to All European Railway timetables on the home page to find an English page where you just put in the departure city, arrival city and date and get all the train schedules and such vital info as whether reservations are required, etc. www.euraide.com also has good info. www.ricksteves.com has info on trains as well as flights.

The order of cities will work by rail; you could actually do it other ways such as Nice-Milan-Venice-Florence-Rome and then fly on a budget carrier Rome-Paris.

Another possibility would be to take a budget flight on an airline such as Vueling from Barcelona to either Milan or Rome and continuing by rail...perhaps from Rome to Florence-Venice-Milan-Nice and then taking a TGV from Nice to Paris or a budget flight Nice-Paris.

The Barcelona-Nice segment (by rail) which could be very laborious during the day as opposed to taking the Elipsos rail service Barcelona-Milan overnight and changing there for a Eurostar to Rome... BUT that would mean backtracking from Rome to Florence etc....but you get my drift I am sure.

You can only make the reservations on some of these segments a maximum of 60 days/nights ahead.

Have you input your proposed itinerary at www.railsaver.com to see if a pass would be more economical?

When you buy a TGV ticket in France you must at the same time buy a seat reservation.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have typed my itinerity in websites to see if it would really save to get a pass or individual tickets. It said pass is better. However, I was looking at prices on alleuroperail.com, for like overnight trains, just the reservations is like 70 dollars for people with pass. However, if I purchase a regular ticket, it is only 44 dollars more, which seems cheaper what 1 day in a 6 day eurail select pass cost?

Flying to Italy from Spain seems like a nice option. I will look it up. Thanks