haswid
Traveller
0 comments
Posted 11 years ago
I'm planning a trip around Europe with Interrail 2nd class with my famil this summer. We have two kids, one four year old and one one year old.
To make things easy we are thinking of travelling as much as possible on night trains. For the happiness of other travellers we want to have a couchette or a sleeper compartment for ourselves, and I can't figure out if this is possible.
The youngest child is so small that he will not have a interrail ticket. Is it still possible to reserve a 4-berth couchette? When reading City Night Line info I get the impression that we only can reserve berths for the grown-ups and other info tell me that only pass holders can have a couchette reservation. We definitely want to travel on City Night Line, but possibly also on SNCF (like Paris - Nice or Paris-PortBou). And for SNCF, can we reserve a 4-berth even if we only have 2nd class passes?
And what will the reservation prices be (if it possible)?
/Haswid
Flo
Traveller
10724 comments
Hej!
I am no expert on this (sadly) but anyway:
When travelling on CNL you can of course book a whole compartment, however you would then need to book a proper fourth ticket (which you then just use so that no one else can be booked into your compartment). However, I think it will be rather tricky to book three InterRail reservations (for you, your wife and your older child) plus a separate regular ticket and get the fourth ticket booked in the same compartment as you three. A competent salesperson at a counter should be able to do so (at least within Germany). Anyway I think it might be easier to just book a complete 3bed sleeper compartment - the reservation fee is higher but I think you will save money since you wont need an extra fourth ticket. However, you wont find 3bed compartments on all CNL routes, sadly since CNL trains are operated with two different types of sleeping carriages; some of them offer 1, 2 and 4bed sleepers, some 1, 2 and 3bed sleepers.
In France, 4bed couchettes require a 1st class ticket. There is an option to book a whole compartment as a family but sadly I am not familiar with how to do that - and since you are travelling with InterRail I think SNCF itself doesnt really know how to handle this.
Sorry for not being able to help more. :os
Anyway, if there's anything else, just ask. And if you want, share your experience as a family travelling with InterRail with us, it surely will help others in the future! :)
Flo 8)