Rail Passes: How the Magic Happened

If you've been catching up on all my posts, salivating over the great pictures of Paris, daydreaming about boat tours in Strasbourg, and wondering "How can I do that?", then this is the post for you.

Here's the step-by-step process of how I made a rail pass save me loads of euros.

1. Compare Rail Europe passes to Eurail passes.

In the past, I used a Eurail pass to travel to 4 different countries with 12 days of travel.  And what a great deal that was!  However, as I was country browsing, I realized that Eurail did not have a one-country pass for France.  Wah wah. So, Rail Europe won for this trip!

2. Decide how many days you want to travel.

In talking with my sister, we knew that we definitely wanted to see at least 3 cities.  So, we knew that we needed at least 4 days of travel on our passes.  However, we really liked the flexibility of adding one more day to our trip, so we compared some options:

3. Choose your pass.

In the end, we decided on a 5-day travel pass for France in 1st class.  There were two reasons for traveling "en premiere": 1. Because we can, and it was only a $35 difference per person. 2. It would give us many more booking options, as I knew we'd be making reservations within a month of our first travel date, and there are a certain, limited amount of bookings open on the TGV (fast train) for those traveling with a rail pass.

4. Choose your cities.

If you look through other blog posts that I've written, you'll see that we stopped in Mont-Saint-Michel, Paris, Strasbourg, and Lourdes.  And we had a few great one- or two-hour layovers in other cities like Bordeaux, Montpellier, and Rennes.

5. Book your trains.

I did all of this at an SNCF (French nation-wide railway company) ticket booth, but you can do it online as well.  (Note: I just discovered this booking online through the RailEurope site, so I can't help too much with it, but I'll definitely be trying it out in the future!) 

Depending on how long you take to make these bookings and what kind of trains you're looking at, this step can test how rapidly you can adjust travel plans, how kindly you can speak with French ticket clerks, and how willing you are to spend all day traveling to see a city.  But hang in there, the results are worth it!

6. Breathe. You've accomplished an incredible amount.

7. If you're staying overnight in a city, look at booking a place to stay!  I've been really happy with airbnb, but more on that in another post!

8. Enjoy your work! I know that I did!

Congratulations, it's time to travel.

--Angie