The pass with three months of unlimited travel is best used for fast-paced trips where you plan to cover a lot of ground over an extended time. There are also passes available for unlimited travel days during set periods of time. Those continuous train passes include durations of:. The pass is sold by the number of travel days you are planning on using it.
For example, if you book a train that leaves on Monday night and arrives on Tuesday morning, you will only need to use one travel day the day of your departure to cover that trip.
To find the best pass for your particular trip, Eurail built an online tool that lets you fill in your travel plans, including which countries you plan to visit, how many days you intend to travel by train, and the length of your entire trip. At the end of the short survey, it recommends the pass that suits your needs best.
You can buy any type of Eurail Pass online from Eurail. RailPass is an authorized vendor that sells Eurail Passes for around the same price as Eurail. Rail Europe also plans on selling Eurail Passes once again, although it has yet to name a date when they will be available on its site. One Country Passes are slightly more affordable and vary by each country.
Eurail also groups certain regions so you can get multiple countries for the price of one with its Benelux Pass Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and Scandinavia Pass Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
It depends. Plus, train travel is more sustainable and more scenic. In some instances, yes. For trains in popular countries like France, Spain, and Italy—especially in the summer—you will need to make an advance seat reservation at an additional cost generally from around 3 to 10 euros , even if the fare is included with your Eurail Pass.
In addition to those popular destinations, all night trains and most international high-speed trains throughout Europe require a supplemental reservation fee. Some scenic trains, like the Bernina Express in Switzerland, also require one. To find out if you need to make a reservation, search for your desired route on the Eurail Timetable , and the results will show whether or not one is necessary.
Another key factor to consider is that train stations tend to be in the center of cities rather than the outskirts like most airports, which means travelling by train can save you lots of time and money in that regard too.
Because of all those factors, I do think that train travel makes sense if your priority is comfort and convenience, and using a Eurail pass can help you save quite a bit of money. Another key consideration is which Eurail pass you intend to buy. The first distinction that you need to make is in terms of the geographical area that your pass covers. This is actually pretty easy now because Eurail recently rehauled their entire system and nowadays you can only purchase either a one country pass or a global pass.
On the other hand, with the global pass, you actually gain access to the entire Eurail network, which is 31 countries. On the other hand, a global pass can be worth it depending on where you go and how far apart your different stops are. BUT I do think it can be really, really worth it if you plan a bunch of different legs that are only within a few hours of each other.
Eurail Continuous Pass vs. Eurail Flex Pass. The second distinction that you need to make with your Eurail pass is in terms of the validity period and the number of travel days that you get….
There are two kinds of passes that you can purchase, the first of which is the continuous pass. With it, you purchase a ticket for a set period of time and then every day of that period you can ride a train and your pass is valid.
On the other hand, you have the flex pass. With it, you get a set number of days to travel in a time period ranging from one to two months. Continuous type Eurail passes are then valid for unlimited train travel every day through the whole pass validity period. Flexi type Eurail passes give you a certain number of unlimited travel days during the overall pass validity period, which is usually 2 months starting on the date you validate the pass.
If the number of days is, say, 10, there will be 10 empty boxes printed on your Eurail pass. On a day when you decide to use one of those 10 days of unlimited travel, you simply write the date in one of the boxes in ball-point pen. You now have unlimited train travel from midnight to midnight on that date. You do not have to decide in advance which 10 days these will be, you can decide as you go, simply writing the date in a box each time you want to 'spend' a day of free travel, until all your boxes of free travel are used up.
Tip 1: It's a beginner's mistake, but even if you have a fixed itinerary, don't pre-date all your boxes for the dates you think you'll need them at the beginning of your tour. Unexpected things can happen, once you have written a date in a box, you can't change it. Play safe, write in the dates as you go along. Tip 2: You aren't forced to use your pass for every train trip you want to make. On the other hand, if you bought a 5-day pass and only planned to make 4 longer distance trips, you may as well use the spare 5th day for this day trip.
Unlimited travel means unlimited travel! I'm not sure which part of 'un' people don't understand, the 'u' or the 'n'! You can take as many trains as you like between midnight and midnight that day, 1 train or 20 trains, 10 miles or miles, you can stay on trains all day if you want to.
Though there may be seat reservations or small supplements to pay on certain trains, more about that below. Filling in the travel diary Your pass comes in a cover, and attached to that cover is a blank travel diary. Each time you take a train, you need to record the date, where it's from and where it's to, in black or blue ink - that's in addition to filling in the travel date on the pass itself if it's a Flexi-type pass.
The railways use this as market research, helping them to allocate Eurail revenue between operators. To make it clear, Brussels to Nuremberg with a change in Frankfurt requires two separate entries, Brussels-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Nuremberg. However, if a conductor found you had made only one entry, Brussels to Nuremberg, they should point it out and maybe ask you to change it but that's all. In theory there's a fine if the conductor finds that you haven't filled it in at all, but in practice most conductors will simply ask you to do so if you haven't.
However, there's always the risk that you'll meet a jobsworth, so play safe and fill it in while you're waiting for the train or as soon as you get on. If you're using a mobile Eurail pass in the Eurail app on your smartphone rather than the classic printed pass, mobile passes are new in September there's no paper travel diary, you just use the Eurail pass app's journey planner to select and add a trip, or you can add one manually. Which trains can you use with a pass? See map of rail network in the Eurail countries.
Eurail passes also cover many but not all private operators in Switzerland and a few other countries, as shown in the country by country guide. Map of rail network in the Eurail countries. You may be given a small timetable booklet with your pass People often think that the trains in the booklet are the only trains you're allowed to take with your Eurail pass.
Nonsense, of course not! You're allowed to use any regular scheduled train run by the operators covered by your pass, whether it's in that booklet or not!
Top tip, download the Railplanner App I recommend downloading the Railplanner App for your smartphone from www. This is a great Europe-wide timetable app which you can use to check train times whilst on the move - the timetable works offline, so no data cost issues. Eurail passes don't give free travel on buses, trams or metros in big cities as these are usually run by urban transit authorities, not by the national train operator.
Eurail passes don't cover some private train operators For example, passes don't cover the Euskotren narrow-gauge local trains in Spain, the Circumvesuviana railway Naples-Pompeii-Sorrento or the Jungfrau line in Switzerland. Nor do Eurail passes usually cover the private operators who now compete with the state-owned national train operator on a handful or routes, such as Italo high-speed trains in Italy which compete with the national train operator Trenitalia - as a passholder, you have to use Trenitalia.
Again, the country-by-country guide gives details of what is and isn't covered in each country. The best resource for finding train times anywhere in Europe for use with a Eurail pass? That's the excellent German Railways online timetable at www. It covers data for the national rail operators across almost all of Europe. It doesn't hold data for Italo, FEVE, Euskotren, Regiojet, Leo Express or the Circumvesuviana and so on, only for the main national operators, so as a general rule, any train shown in its database can be used with a Eurail pass, although supplements or special fares must be paid on some trains.
It also helpfully says 'please reserve' on trains which have compulsory reservations. More info. Couchettes, 4-berth : Much more room than 6-berth! Using a pass on overnight trains You need to pay a fee to use a couchette or sleeper with your pass, the fee is usually per bed, not per compartment. Berth fees for passholders are listed for specific routes in the Eurail pass reservation page.
If you have a flexi-type pass, an overnight train only uses one day on your pass, the day of departure. Here is the new rule, :which replaced the old 'After ' rule in January A Eurail flexi pass day normally runs from midnight to midnight.
But if you board any overnight train before midnight, and do not change trains after midnight , you only need to use one day on a Flexi pass, the day of departure. It no longer matters what time your sleeper train leaves on day 1, or what time it arrives on day 2.
The date you write on your pass is that of day 1. As normal, you get unlimited travel from midnight to midnight on day 1, so you can use other trains on day 1 before boarding your sleeper, all on the same pass day. You can then continue your journey on that direct overnight train until you get off at your destination on Day 2.
The only proviso is that you cannot change trains after midnight, and that both the departure day and arrival day must fall within the overall validity period of the pass. For example, if you wanted to take the Dacia Express leaving Vienna at 42 on the 1st August and arriving Bucharest at on the 2nd August, you'd enter the date of departure, 1st August, in one of the unlimited travel boxes on your pass, and that then covers the whole of the sleeper train journey, even the part on 2nd August, in this example in the afternoon!
And as you'd have unlimited travel all day on 1st August, it would also cover you for any other journeys you wanted to make on that day, for example a preceding journey from Prague to Vienna to connect with the sleeper.
On the other hand, if you wanted to take an onward train on 2nd August after alighting from the sleeper, that means using up another travel day on your pass, this time dated 2nd August.
But even if you don't use any other trains on 2nd August, that day of arrival still needs to fall within the overall validity period of your pass, in other words, if you had a days-inmonth flexi pass the 2nd August must be inside the 1 month period, it cannot be Day 32 just outside it.
Got it? When do you need a reservation? For journeys on local, regional or suburban trains For travel on longer-distance trains between cities, here is my rough - but actually pretty accurate - rule of thumb You can just hop on any train without a reservation, sit in any unreserved empty seat, and show your pass when asked by the conductor - even premier high-speed trains like Germany's superb ICE or Austria's railjet trains.
Trains cannot 'sell out'. Passes retain their 'hop on any train' convenience factor in these countries. Remember that with a flexi type pass, an overnight train only uses one pass day, the date of departure, see the explanation here.
See the country-by-country guide for details of which trains need a reservation, and what these cost. You can make reservations in advance with the agency that sells you your Eurail pass by phone or in some cases online -although they may charge you a booking fee on top - or you can make them when you get to Europe at station ticket offices. In only a handful of cases, you can make reservations online with no added fees direct with the operator, as explained here.
For example, different types of train may serve one route, and only the faster or more comfortable type requires a reservation. The choice between speed, comfort or avoiding the reservation cost is yours! In other cases trying to dodge the fast train reservation fee is more trouble than it's worth, as it means taking a relay-race of local trains, taking hours longer and involving several changes of train.
Just bite the bullet and pay the fee! To find out if there is a reasonable no-fee alternative, try using the Europe-wide online timetable at www.
How can I find out more? You can find out more about Eurail passes at www. This is the site run by the Eurail organisation themselves, who run the Eurail scheme on behalf of participating operators. For a modest fee, DiscoverByRail. First, a reality check: There isn't a magic website that can do all passholder reservations at cheap prices with no fees all in one place. Different operators use different reservation systems, many operator websites only sell regular tickets not passholder reservations.
However, some passholder reservations can indeed be made online, with no added booking fees and simply printed out or collected at the station. I'll list major train services from that country to neighbouring countries and tell you if they can be booked online, and if so where and how.
Making reservations at the station You can make reservations and pay the necessary fees at station ticket offices either in advance or on the day of departure, sometimes up to an hour or two before the train leaves, sometimes right up to departure time. Just show your rail pass at the ticket window and ask for the reservation. Many European railway staff speak some English, but if you don't speak the language, just write down what you want and show it to the booking clerk. In Italy, you'll find it easier to use the self-service touch-screen ticket machines to make your passholder reservations, it's really easy, see an illustrated step-by-step guide to using these Italian ticket machines.
The Railplanner App Eurail is the main pass range for overseas visitors to Europe, but several countries also have their own national railpasses which can be worth knowing about as they can often be better value if you are just visiting that specific country. Paris Visite card: Unlimited travel on the Paris metro, and more. The Swiss Travel Pass for Switzerland. This is Switzerland's own-brand railpass, there is no single-country Eurail pass.
Unlike many other railpasses you don't have to rack up a huge mileage to make a railpass worthwhile in Switzerland. Remove Pass es. Your cart is empty. Is a Eurail Pass worth it? Should I buy a Eurail Pass or point-to-point tickets? Avoid hours of planning and queues at the station A Eurail Pass makes booking your big trip so much simpler.
Point-to-point tickets.
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