Transport in Europe! Help please.

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Hi there,

I am spending 5 weeks in Europe and looking for the cheapest transport possible.
The itenary is:
Arrive in London-1week
            Make way to Croatia (have 4-5days to do so)
            Spend one week in Split, Croatia.
            Croatia-Italy.
            Spend one week in Italy
            Travel Italy-France
             Spend one week making way up to Paris
             Fly out of Paris

I would prefer to do a few long haul trips to get the countries and then stay in a few key cities most of the time and do a bit of tripping around once there.
What I am looking for advice on is whether it is best to get this Eurorail pass or book the regional trains which seem to be cheaper and slower.
It seems there is some contradictory advice around though which is confusing me.
If anyone could give me any advice I would be truly grateful!

Cheers

Arrive in London-1week. Make way to Croatia (have 4-5days to do so)

Hmm... do you really want to travel by ground all the way from London to Croatia? Because it will be much more expensive, then to fly, only London-Paris/Brussels leg by EuroStar train probably will cost more than flight from London to Croatia (WizzAir, EasyJet etc.). Maybe it will be a good thing to go with mid solution - fly from London to somewhere closer to Croatia (Budapest, Venice, Triest etc.) and then just spend those days on getting from there to your Croatian destination?
Croatia-Italy: obviously ferries. Available from most of the major coastal cities (Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik etc.). Check - www.jadrolinija.hr, http://www.blueline-ferries.com/ etc.
Italy: withing Italy pass makes sense only for multiple long distance journeys with expensive high-speed trains. If you plan to do short legs like Ancona-Bologna, Bologna-Firenze, Firenze-Pisa etc., then pass is not worth it, since tickets for regional trains will be much cheaper, roughly saying from 5 to 20 EUR for such relatively short trips.
Italy-France: there is a special discounted tickets available for direct trains from Italy to France (trenitalia.com), discount is called 'SMART', you can purchase such tickets online from TrenItalia website. Better to do it in advance, since the number of those is limited.
France: pretty much the same story as with Italian domestic trips. Long distance journeys and usage of high-speed TGV trains tend to be expensive, but you can always use regional TER trains, especially since your plan is to "make your way up to Paris", thus you hardly will travel long-distance on every journey. You can check out fare here - www.tgv-europe.com

Resume: considering the info you gave us, the pass option probably isn't the best solution for you. Since in most cases, as far as we understand, you plan rather short trips where actual point to point fare would be cheaper, than the cost of the travel day of your pass. Loss of time with regional vs. high-speed trains is not that bad either, on short distance legs it isn't that essential, imho. Plus on some routes there is simply no high-speed trains available.

p.s. maybe if you can give us exact 'must' destinations for you, we can advice more precise advice

"What I am looking for advice on is whether it is best to get this Eurorail pass or book the regional trains which seem to be cheaper and slower."

I'm reading between the lines here, but I get the impression that you think 'Eurorail' sell tickets for all the fast trains, and each country is left with the regional trains. This is not true - groups like 'Eurorail' are just expensive resellers. Have a look at the advice already given, there are plenty of ticket options. You'll only know which is cheaper when you have a concrete itinerary - then you can compare a pass vs point to point.

It'll take 2 or 3 days to get from London to Croatia, so you won't really be able to stop much on the way. Take a cheap flight (there are always cheap flights from London) - this will give you more time to explore Croatia. Be sure to go to Trogir (very near Split), because its a wonderful place