Travelling in and out of PARIS - no seats in Frech trains!

Nadia-Newstead
Traveller
1 comments

Posted 15 years ago

Within France, and crossing any borders into or out of France you MUST have a reservation for any train, any time, anywhere...even if you DO have an interrail pass

My two friends and i ended up spending 5 hours in Gare du Nord trying to get a train out of Paris - all the interrailing tickets this year have been sold and there are only ever a certain amount of interrailing tickets on any train, we spent 3 hours in the queue designed for InterRail and Eurail pass holders - it was a Sunday and there were only 2/8 desks open. No-one was able to get out of Paris that day and there were no seats available to interrail pass holders until the Tuesday. We ended up paying €70 to get to Luxembourg, which was highly infuriating as we weren't expecting to have to pay for a full price ticket AND we were on a tight budget which affected our trip later on. The problem is that most interrail and Eurail pass holders go east out of Paris and there aren't enough InterRail seats allocated for the demand which seems ridiculous as there are still seats available on these trains but they just can't be used by the pass holders just in case some local suddenly decides on a whim to get on a train east out of Paris - in one month not one train we travelled on was completely full!!

so here's the advice - if you know which day you want to leave a certain place, book the reservation (if needed - which it IS in France) the day you arrive, that way it's out of your mind and you can enjoy your time there without worrying if you're going to be able to leave!! Paris was our first stop so we learnt from our mistake and booked ourselves reservations an all the necessary trains without any hitches...we spoke to several other people who all said that they hadn't needed reservations for anywhere else except France and certain high speed trains so BOOK IN ADVANCE for peace of mind!