Susannex
Traveller
0 comments
Posted 9 years ago
Hello!
We are two girls planning our interrail-route for April, and we would like your help!
These are the stops we are sure we want to go to, within a 15-days travelpass;
- Paris, France
- Bern, Switzerland
- Firenze, Italy
- Rome, Italy
-Venezia, Italy
-Vienna, Austria
- Budapest, Hungary
- Krakow, Poland
(The last and first stop will not be within the 15 days of our travelpass, as we will stay for a few days, before and after the pass is activated.)
We are living in Norway, and are planning to take the plane to Paris and home again from Krakow.
Does our route seem realistic to you? Do you think we will have time for all of our stops?
If no, what places should we leave out?
And did we miss any nice cities that would fit into this route?
How does reservation with tickets for the train work? Is it usually expensive to prebook, and how long before do you have to order it? (remember we are travelling in April, so maybe the trains are not a full as they are in the summer?) As we dont know for sure how many days we will stay at each destination, will we be able to move a reservation to another day?
We would really love your advice and suggestions, and also general tips within interrailing.
First time interrailing, please help! :P ;)
Flo
Traveller
10724 comments
Hi!
For your route I would recommend to travel with the 10in22 ticket instead - this is cheaper than the 15 day ticket but would still easily cover all the routes you want to travel.
Regarding reservations: These are always the same price, no matter when you book. As you already mentioned, since you will be travelling in April you should not have problems with trains being fully booked so you can travel really spontaneously. This means that apart from the first reservation from Paris towards Switzerland (details below) you can buy reservations the day before or even on the day. If you choose to go by night train (which would make sense twice on your trip) it would be better to make the reservation a few days in advance if possible.
Reservations are fixed on a date and train when purchased and there are only limited and costly, if any, options to return/exchange them.
Paris - Bern: Avoid the direct TGV Lyria services from Paris to Switzerland which are quite expensive when travelling with a rail pass (25ish €). Instead, you can use a domestic TGV from Paris to either Mulhouse, Strasbourg or Colmar and continue from there to Basel using regional trains. From Basel take any train to Bern. This will not take much longer than travelling with a TGV Lyria but is much cheaper. Since TGV reservations for InterRail on each train you may think about booking this reservation in advance on [ux]https://rail.shop/acprail/reservation[/ux] or [ux]https://rail.shop/sncf/reservation[/ux] (which should not be a problem since your starting day from Paris to Bern will be fixed).
Bern - Firenze: There are direct trains from Bern to Milano but these cost 11€ reservation. You can avoid this by travelling with these trains to Domodossola only (Italian border station) and change there to a local train to Milano. There is also a number of other services going to Domodossola from Brig; frequent trains go from Bern to Brig.
From Milano to Firenze there are frequent high speed trains Frecciarossa which require a 10€ reservation. If you want to avoid this there is a number of slower connections with IC trains or you can of course use regional trains. However these options can take quite a bit longer than the high speed trains so I would recommend to travel from Milano to Firenze by high speed train. Reservations for Italian high speed trains can be made on the Trenitalia website using the Global Fare option.
Firenze - Roma and Roma - Venezia: As above, you have the choice between high speed trains (10€ reservation) or slower IC (3€ reservation, optional) or regional trains.
Venezia - Vienna: There is a direct EC train but the reservation costs 15€. Think about taking the night train or travel via Slovenia (then I would recommend to add a stop at Lake Bled or Ljubljana): [u]https://rail.cc/blog/travel-lake-bled-train/[/u]
Vienna - Budapest: Two hourly Railjet trains plus additional EC, no reservation needed
Budapest - Krakow: I recommend the night train for which a reservation is needed.
[u]https://rail.cc/en/first-time-interrail[/u]
If you have time to visit other cities on the way, you could think about adding Strasbourg or Colmar in France; Luzern in Switzerland; Bologna, Siena, Perugia, Assisi in Italy; as mentioned Bled or Ljubljana in Slovenia; Graz in Austria,...
And dont forget To support the free information and the forum on railcc, please be fair and buy your official Interrail pass via our railcc partner link: [ux]https://rail.shop/interrail[/ux]
Thank you! :)
Flo 8)