47 destinations in 2 months? Seriously? That’s way too much. You’ll be in a haze the entire time, will mostly only remember blurry scenery from train windows, come home with a very bad overall experience, and post here stuff like “why didn’t anyone warn me that was going to be an insane superhuman pace!”

Slow it down. Pare it down. Concentrate your time by putting first things first. For example, what do you really want to see, visit, and experience? Beaches, parties, clubs, history, architecture, genealogy, mountain hiking, castles and royal things, fashion and design, food and wine, beer and spirits, people… what? Anythings you can remove, or prefer to concentrate less on?

Also consider the style of traveler you are—your personality, pace, and budget.

Give us some feedback on this type of stuff, and you will probably get some really good advice from regular contributors here, on how to focus your 2 months for a better overall experience in Europe.

Yes, a 2 month railpass will be your train ticket for any virtually any train you take in the countries if covers for 60 consecutive days. I have absolutely no idea what you mean. It works for almost every train. The only exceptions are some scenic rail lines in Switzerland and Eurostar, the chunnel train. The pass will serve as your ticket on high speed train, but it will not cover the seat reservation, which is required on many of the high speed trains. Some trains require reservations. Most do not. I only bother with a reservation if the specific train I want to take requires it, or if there’s some reason I think a train will be especially crowded and the ride is long enough that I don’t want to take a chance on not finding a seat. Just about anything you can haul on is accepted. Bicycles sometimes require an extra fee. Limit your gear to what you can handle and still have one hand free. Most locals bring food and drink. I always carry a water bottle. While some trains have restaurant cars, bar cars or snack carts, many do not and anything purchased on the train or in the train station will be expensive.

IMO, the 60 consecutive day pass is seldom the best deal financially. Why do you think it’s best for your itinerary?

hello Don

I know this are too many destinations and I am very affraid of that, but I asked for help here to help me on reducing the list, and following your advices, I took out a couple of places and added a couple more, so wasn’t very succesful!
so if you can help me out, I will really appreciate it

here is the list again (the number is the quantity of days I plan to stay, and at the right the important things I would like to see):

Aalborg 0,3 ?
Amsterdam 3 el centro, Van Gogh Museum, red light district?
Barcelona 4 Futboll Club Barcelona Museum, Sagrada Família
Berlin 4 Museumsinsel , Jüdisches Museum, Museum für Naturkunde, Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche, Reichstag, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Zoo
Bologna 1 Torre degli Asinelli, Fontana di Nettuno
Bordeaux 0,5 Pedestrian center, tower Saint-Michel
Bremen 0,3 Town Hall, Dom St Petri , main square
Bristol 1 Bristol Zoo Gardens, Cabot Circus (shopping)
Brussel 1 Grand Place-Grote Markt, Manneken Pis, Atomium, Autoworld,
Budapest 1 The Royal Palace , The Parliament Building, The City Park, Aquincum , House of the Future
Copenaguen 1 Copenhagen Zoo, Amalienborg,
Dresden 1 Zwinger Palace, Semperoper
Encamp 1 ?
Florencia 3 Bargello, Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Giotto’s Tower, Palazzo Vecchio,
Genova 1 Aquarium, The Old Harbour
Goteborg 1 Skansen Kronan, Volvo Museum, Aeroseum
Graz 1 Old town, Clock Tower (Uhrturm), Eggenberg Castle
Hamburg 0,3 ?
Innsbruck 1 Cathedral at Saint Jacob, Bergiselschanze ,
La Rochelle 0,5 Acuario, Las tres torres
Liverpool 1 The Beatles Story, Canada Boulevard
London 4 Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey
Madrid 0,5
Madrid 3 Museo de América, Palacio Real, Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol, Real Madrid Museum
Manchester 3 gpro meeting
Monaco 1 le rocher, Palais Princier, Jardin Exotique, Grand Casino, Formula 1 Grand Prix,
Montpellier 1 La Place Royale du Peyrou
Munich 1 BMW Museum, Deutsches Museum, Schloss Nymphenburg, Residenz
Nantes 2 Castle of the Dukes of Brittany, Cathédrale Saint Pierre, l’Ile de Versailles, Le Jardin des Plantes
Nice 1 Museum of Asian art, Parc Phoenix,
Oslo 3 Stortinget , The Royal Palace, The University of Oslo, Nobel Peace Centre, Viking Ship Museum, The Holocaust Center,Frogner Park,
Paris 4 Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame de Paris, Eiffel Tower, Chateau de Versailles, The Louvre, Musée Marmottan-Monet
Portsmouth 1 Spinnaker Tower, D-Day Museum
Praha 3 Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, The Old Town, Josefov, Military Museum,
Pula 2 The Arena, Kaštel, Mornaričko groblje
Rennes 0,5 Les Champs Libres
Roma 3 Colosseum and Piazza Venezia, Pantheon, Vatican,
Rotterdam 2 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Railz Miniworld, Rotterdam Zoo, Arboretum Trompenburg,
Saint-Malo 0,5 Tidal power plant
Stockholm 2 Stockholm’s Old Town, The Stockholm archipelago, Skansen museum,
Toulouse 1 Basilique Saint Sernin, Pont-Neuf
Valladolid 0,5 Miguel de Cervantes, Museo de esculturas
Venezia 3 Saint Mark’s Basilica, Piazza San Marco, Chiesa di San Barnaba, Rialto market
Viena 2 Schatzkammer (Imperial Treasury), The New Palace (Neue Hofburg), Technical Museum, Natural History Museum, Schloss Schönbrunn, Hofburg Palace
Zagreb 2 The Upper and Lower Towns, Mirogoj cemetery,
Zaragoza 1 Aljafería Palace, Roman theater, Nuestra Señora del Pilar

some citys are just in the way from one destination to another one and I would be spending only a couple of hours, or at least that is my idea
in some citys as London, Paris I plan to stay four nights

but I still know there are too many and I would appreciate some help on reducing it

hello oldlady

I believe it is the best for what I have read in eurail.com, and as I will be travelling several hours I think economically will save up too, but I have no idea on how much individual tickets cost for example (maybe if I reduce the list of the trip another thing will be best)

thanks again

Huh? how many hours you spend on the train is not an issue in determining which railpass is best. I think you’ll want a railpass, but I really doubt that the 60 consecutive day railpass will be the best one. Have you tried railsaver? It’s part of the “trip planner” or you can link to it under the “bookings” tab. You will not know which, if any, railpass is best until you have an exact itinerary and decide whether you are willing and able to spend hours on-line looking for the best possible deal and buying tickets well in advance. Other than using railsaver — which gives a pretty decent estimate of the “regular” price for tickets, you’d have to price each ticket individually on the national rail company websites. The links are in a sticky at the top of this forum’s first page.

yes, and I am very angry with that…
after spending like half an hour including all the citys, then adding my name, and hitting submit button, told me “max of 15 citys”… could have warned it somwhere before making me waste my time… for example when I was inserting the 16th city, and not after I inserted the 47 citys…

Sorry about that. I didn’t realize the trip planner was limited to 15 stops. A 47 stop itinerary will take hours and hours to research using about a 15 different national rail company websites. You really do need to get a better handle on a reasonable itinerary before you start trying to figure out which railpass is best. Buying your railpass is one of the last things that needs to be done — about 2 weeks before you leave home is adequate time.

1. Put all your cities on a map.
2. In your case, I’d look at regions to cut. You’ve covered a huge geographic territory. Scandinavia, Iberia or the Balkans may have to wait until your next trip. You need to narrow to about 30 cities — perhaps a few more if an addition is close to places you’re visiting, less if you still want to try to cover the entire continent.
3. Figure out a rough route from the map Use http://reiseauskunft… for train schedules and figure out which legs are reasonable by train and which ones make more sense by plane. My rules: Less than 5 hours by train, take the train. 5 to 7 hours by train, look for a flight or overnight train — fly if you can find a cheap flight, 2nd choice overnight train. Over 7 hours by train, fly unless it’s a good route (no connections) for an overnight train. Limit the total of flights and overnight trains to an average of one a week — so about 7 is max for your trip. I’d seriously look at changing the itinerary if I ended up with more than 5 legs long enough to require flight or overnight train.
4. Then spend some time trying to figure out which, if any, railpass works best. We MIGHT be able to give you more help then.
5. Do not make the mistake of thinking you have to fit every place you ever thought of visiting into this trip. If you enjoy yourself you will find a way to get back to Europe. Personally, I’d look at a 3 or 4 week trip this time and then another trip in a year or two.

0k to everybody, thanks for the help provided

I have eliminated a lot of destinations

http://www.eurotrip….

the unused days I consider them as travelling by train

what do you think now? is it suitable? is it doable? what eurail pass will fit me?

thanks in advance

It’s doable and it’s suitable if it’s what you want to do. You seem to have researched these cities.

Have you purchased your plane ticket? An open jaw flight would make a lot more sense than backtracking to Madrid — particularly since the any type of railpass would work better if UK (not covered by the pass) was at one end of your trip. A 2 month consecutive pass would probably work if you didn’t validate it right away. Buy a point to point ticket to Nantes and validate it at the start of the next trip. The 15 rail day flexipass plus a couple of flights and some point to point tickets might be cheaper.

You have many cities in your list that I wouldn’t recommend, as their are more interesting alternatives. Is there any specific reason why you want to go there?

Nantes- alright but nothing spectacular
Liverpool & Manchester – maybe interesting if you’re a soccer fan and visit a match
Brussels- not really worth it, visit Bruges instead
Rotterdam- industrial town, not advisable
Genoa- just pass it, save the time for other italian towns
Zaragoza- alright but nothing spectacular

thanks to you two

oldlady, the reason why I go to madrid and return from there is because of economic fly, and because I am from Uruguay, South America, and you need to proove that you are going away from Europe, so something open wouldn’t work for that

will I end up saving money if I use the two month eurail pass? I have no idea how to find out train tickets costs from here, I have only found times from oebb

bigfoot, nantes is just to have something in the way to manchester where I have a meeting
lot of people have told me to see bruges instead, but also a lot told me that it is like venezia, I am confussed there
genoa and zaragoza I thought on taking them away, maybe I finally do it

thanks again

Bruges is called the Venice of the north because of all the small canals. But it is a place of its own, and is very beautiful, so it shouldn’t be missed. Also, the atmosphere is of course different then in venice, so definitely go there. Brussels can be skipped.

1. I haven’t been to Zaragoza, but I’m pretty much in agreement with Bigfoot on everything else, including the fact that any city with canals is described as “the Venice of the North.” No place is “like Venice.”

The only way to know is to price out each individual ticket on the individual national rail company websites. Unless you’re willing to buy non-refundable tickets 60 days in advance, it will be cheaper. I would buy a 15 day global flexipass. Skip Nantes and fly from Spain to UK. Validate your railpass after you get to Paris (or in London in the unlikely event that “passholder fare” on Eurostar works out for you) and use it for any trip where the cost of the ticket is more than the average cost of a day of the railpass. Buy a point to point ticket (at the train station) for your cheaper trips.

thanks again!

still not convinced on going by plane to england, according to edreams, the cheapest flight costs around 240 euros, and the rest jump out to 1000 euros! that is too much for my budget
but I can’t find out a place to compare rail tickets still, you mentioned official sites, but from oebb I get one of the trains is euronight EN 407, and couldn’t find anything regarding this

thanks again for your help

Use www.whichbudget.com to see which low fare airlines fly which routes and check our “cheap flights” forum for more links, tips and help. You can fly Madrid to Liverpool on Easy Jet or Ryan Air. Easy Jet shows 43 euros on June 8. Look into re-arranging either the Spanish or the British part of your trip to take advantage of cheap flights.

I keep trying to make the point that there is no one place to price rail tickets. Finding and comparing rail prices is time consuming, not particularly easy and requires exact dates and times. You need to look at the websites for the national rail companies in each country. For your ticket from Madrid to Nantes, you’d need to check either the Spanish or French site. I’d try both to look for the lowest price and it’s entirely possible that you won’t be able to find the price on either. The links are in a “sticky” at the top of this forum. http://www.eurotrip…. Use the German site for schedules anywhere in Europe and for pricing in Germany. It will usually give prices for routes that start or end in Germany, but sometimes you can find a better price for international tickets on the other country’s site. http://reiseauskunft…

hello oldlady, sorry to ask something else regarding this

that site bahn and oebb… how far among one can see if there will be trains to a date?
I try to find some of the possible timings I will do by june/july, and I get an error message:

but if I do the same search by tomorrow for example, I get data

so, does this means there won’t be trains by that date on those destinations? or that it simply don’t work so far away in time?

thanks again in advance

Schedules are officially published two months in advance, but for the most part they never change. The same train leaves from the same platform at the same time every day for years on end. What’s published now will be fine for planning purposes — just make sure you pick the same day of the week as Saturday and Sunday schedules are sometimes different from weekdays. Check again in mid-May as there may be slight variations between winter and summer schedules — usually only a change of a few minutes (like the train that leaves at 14:09 in winter leaves at 14:05 in summer) or adding another train on popular vacation routes.

I had the same issues when I was deciding whether to buy a Eurail Pass or not.

From what I’ve read rail ticket prices don’t vary much (if at all) month to month so I just punched in dates a week or two from now to get the ticket prices. I used both bahn and raileurope to get the ticket prices.

The thing is when it comes to comparing the value of a pass to individual tickets its not as simple as just getting the prices as you also need to consider how far in advance you are willing to buy them and also how fixed you want your trip to be.

I wanted my trip to be flexible so I based my comparison on prices of tickets I’d get a few days or so in advance and added them up. If I locked in my trip a few months in advance and took advantage of online specials and things like that I would probably have saved money over the pass. That’s not how I wanted to run my trip though and you also run the risk of missing your train and wasting your money. At least with the pass if you miss your train you can still get the next one.

When I tallied my trips up based on a flexible trip I worked out that I would save about $700 using the pass when compared to individual tickets. Plus I get the added bonus of flexibility which was worth a lot to me.

As for flights I’ve been using skyscanner. It has a handy feature where you can search for flights from say Madrid to Everywhere or Everywhere to London (All Airports) etc. So you’ll always be able to see where the cheapest exit to your destination is. Its been giving me lots of options for where I should start my trip from due to all the cheap flights on offer.

Anyway good luck!

Iwantalogin — Good work! I find it surprising that a railpass saves that much, but it sounds like you’ve done it the right way. Did you use the individual national rail company websites for pricing?

No I just used bahn and raileurope to get the prices. Like I said I probably could have saved money by buying ahead and taking advantage of discounts from the individual websites.

I did have a look at a few for comparison. I remember I could have bought a ticket for the San Sebastian to Paris route for around 30 euro off of the individual rail website for france where the price on bahn was around 110 euro. That would have meant that I needed to know when I was traveling that route and would have lost my flexibility. So the more expensive price was what I had to use for my comparison.

I suppose the other reason the pass saves me so much is that I will be making a lot of trips, and quite a few long ones.

Bahn.de will give you standard pricing and specials for trains in Germany. Raileurope is a travel agency. Their prices are “global fares” which are 35% to 40% higher than you’d pay at the train station in Europe — and of course, like bahn.de you might find on-line specials that are even cheaper if you book a few days in advance.. Looks like a railpass, is “worth it” but you won’t save $700.

hi there again

I need help with a train trip from Zagreb to Pula
and from Pula to Munich

I can’t find information in oebb site, seems as I have to do a bus connection in rijeka, but I am unable to find anything else

I’d use the german rail website http://reiseauskunft… instead of the Austrian one for schedules outside Austria. I don’t think Pula has rail service, but it has a commercial airport, so I’d be looking for flights. Croatia airlines flies Zagreb to Pula and German Wings flies Pula to Munich. There are two trains a day from Rijeka to Munich — I’d probably pick the overnight one as it’s a direct train and takes 9 1/2 hours. The day train takes nearly 9 hours and has a connection. Train from from Zagreb to Rijeka is 9 hours with a connection. Again, there’s basically one day train and one overnight train. The overnight has a 4 hour layover in Postjana in the middle of the night and the day train has a layover of nearly 3 hours in Ljubljana — I’d definitely be looking for a flight for this one. Check our “cheap flights” forum for links and suggestions — perhaps better ones than I’ve suggested. I found the German Wings option at www.whichbudget.com and the Croatian air at www.europebyair.com — which has a $99 flight pass that will work for this route (although not necessarily for your specific date).