Europe Trains Guide Forum
General discussion => Travel plans, routes and timetables => Topic started by: max83520 on August 30, 2014, 08:06:43 pm
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Next year, I will be travelling by train from Italy to Sweden, I'll stay in Europe 35 days. The cities that I plan to go are the next:
2 days: Florence, Side trip:Siena (Italy).
My plane arrive in Rome.
Trips:
Rome - Florence
Florence - Siena Florence
8 days: Lugano, Lucern, Bern, Montreaux, Golden Pass (it is included free of charge in Eurail Pass), Zurich, Lausanne, Geneve, Gruyeres (Switzerland).
Trips:
Florence - Milano - Lugano
Lugano - Lucern
Golden Pass
Montreaux - Lausanne - Gruyeres.
Montreaux - Bern
Bern - Zurich
2 days: Heidelberg, Hamburg (Germany).
Trips:
Zurich - Heidelberg
Heidelberg - Hamburg
4 days: Copenhague, Side trips: Odense, Helsingor (Denmark).
Trips:
Hamburg - Copenhague
Copenhague - Helsingor - Copenhague
Copenhague - Odense - Copenhague
Copenhague - Malmö
8 days: Oslo - Alesund (roundtrip, train goes to Andalsnes then bus tu Alesund) Oslo - Bergen (roundtrip) (Norway).
Trips:
Malmö - Göteborg
Göteborg - Oslo
Oslo - Alesund - Oslo
Oslo - Bergen - Oslo
11 days: Malmö, Göteborg, Stockholm, Gotland Island (Discounted tickets with Eurail) Side trip: Uppsala (Sweden).
Oslo - Stockholm
Stockholm - Uppsala - Stockholm.
I plan to buy the Eurail Pass for 30 continuos days, which is 770€. I know I will have to pay around 20€ in reservations fees in Italy, and maybe around 20€ in Norway. Buy I think that the other trips don't need reservation. I did the maths and buying a Swiss Rail Pass (around 300€ for 8 days), and buying train tickets in advance (low cost tickets) in Italy, Germany, Norway, Denmark and Sweden everything sums up 920€.
I read a lot of threads in this forum that recommend don't buying the Eurail Pass. Could it be that in this case it is best to buy the Eurail Pass? What am I missing?
Thanks a lot for your advice. Sorry for my english. Thanks!
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Actual sense in buying rail pass a lot depends on countries where you plan to travel and kind of intended journeys there. And the reason why we usually say "don't buy the Pass" is because fellow travelers consider pass for either very few journeys, or plan to use it in the region where majority of their rail journey would cost less than the price of the pass travel day. While with lengthy itineraries in relatively "expensive" rail countries (=almost all the Western Europe) pass quite often is hard to beat. Your case seems to be like that.
The only comment we may have looking at your plan is that maybe it would be more economical to manage the whole thing with 21 days pass. Why? Because your first days in Italy can be easily and cheaply cover with smartly bought point-to-point tickets, while your last days in Sweden aren't full with many rail trips, so something like Stockholm-Uppsala you can as well travel with point-to-point. So at the end the sum of your point-to-point tickets* can be less than difference between the price of 30 and 21 days passes (although to confirm this guess we may need to know the exact difference in EUR, because in the Eurail Pass website (http://www.eurail.com/eurail-passes/global-pass#stay-updated) we doesn't seem to find your 770 euro option)
* e.g. Rome to Florence is easily doable with 9 euro ticket, Florence to Siena even before departure is just 8,7 euro, Milan to Lugano can be done in <10 euro and so on.
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also depends on your age: <26 EUrail is 2nd, cl, >26 is for 1st cl and thus more expensive-if you buy normal tix, of coruse you can use 2nd=cheaper.
Also depends if you intend to do various daytrips, there are free on a pass
Also look into the slightly cheaper 4 country pass(but you pass through 5)-DK is transit.
The savings can be much more if you want to use buses-but thats too complicated to write down here.
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Thank you very much for your advices!