Isabelle
Traveller
0 comments
Posted 3 months ago
Hi,
We were planning to travel during april-may-june in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia and Bosnia. However, we just started planning out the routes, and discovered it is impossible to travel France and Spain without seat reservations on every train. This will cost us a lot of money which we did not account for, since we now have to pay extra for nearly every travel. Does anyone have any tips? Are we just not looking right, or should we just pick another route?
Arend7
Traveller
592 comments
You can see for yourself by choosing the “no seat reservation” option at the Interrail app. In France you can travel with regional trains called TER, but a lot slower. Less problems with mandatory reservations are Switserland, Germany, UK (except the chunnel with Eurostar) , Ireland, Benelux, Denmark. Or go to the Interrail community site. There is a lot more Interrail experience than on this forum.
MisterSteve
Traveller
916 comments
Italy is even worse because on top of the compulsory reservations on fast trains , the pass isn't valid at all on many regional trains which might be a slower option. Only those operated by Trenitalia or Trenord (Milan/Lombardy region) accept the pass.
There are almost no trains in Bosnia so reservations are a secondary problem.
And train fares in some of those southern countries are so low that Interrail doesn't offer good value.
nltrainer
Traveller
1342 comments
It always helps to quote where you live so we can compare with how it works in that country
By far ESpana=Spain is the very worst, as indeed there all longer dist trains must resevred=also cost extra, for their super fast AVE=hi-speed quite a lot.
FRance: can use the slower regional TER trains-these cover the whole country but are mostly orgaised by the regions. SOME regions also offer very cheap local passes=much cheaper as InterRail
ITaly about comparable to that, except that some regions have outsourced their lcoal trenui to other companies and thus a pass is NOT valid then-but tradionally in IT local frares are quite cheap.
It is not that hard to make RES if need in FR-ES-IT: astonishing to many young people married to their fones: the old style way of simply going to a counter, speak to a person (maybe show that holy fone for what day/train etc.) and let her/him do the work still works-often even still for next train in 20 mins. That fear that all trains are full weeks ahead is really complete onsense-except maybe to football places or Olympics with major games.
As steve also tells: in old Yugoslavija, from SLOvenija onward it gets worse+worse- there are NO trains over borders anymore and what runs is very old, infrequent and also very cheap. Any sensible person there uses the bus if s/he has no 2nd hand car.