Yep, a Eurail pass allows you to hop on and off almost any train you want. It can seem baffling for someone from America (like myself) because it’s all so damn efficient, but it’s real, not fantasy!
 
A Eurail pass counts as a ticket on any train you’re on, with a few exceptions. One is, some trains that are really fancy require reservations for a seat, no matter what. This is no big deal, you just show up to the ticket window, show them your pass, and you pay whatever the difference is. It is usually not very much at all. The other exception that comes to mind immediately is overnight trains. You still have to payfor a berth, or a reclining seat, or whatever…….. BUT, again, it is orders of magnitude cheaper when you have a pass. If you don’t insist on living like a king the whole time, you probably won’t spend more than 20 or 25 Euro on a bunk with your railpass.
 
Unfortunately, you won’t save that much more money by sleeping on a train (it’s actually about the same as being in a hostel), but you do save the most important thing you need during your trip: time! The one downside I can say about sleeping in a berth is… well…. it’s not extremely comfy. The beds are typically bunks and unless you get the top one you probably can’t sit up all the way, haha. Also, be prepared to wake up at 6AM in your destination and have something to do (or better yet: plan it out so your overnight trip is really long… like 10 hrs or something.) Arriving in a whole new town, early in the morning —with nowhere to sit down… I’ll never understand this about EUropean train stations—- can be extremely disorienting, so try to avoid it if you can. Also remember, most hostels don’t let you check in until 3PM or so, so you need somewhere to stow your shit. If you’re like me and you need to sit down with a map of the town and pour over it before you even set foot out of the station, well… you’ll need to adapt a bit!
 
But, now that I’ve scared you away from the whole thing… I hope that helped haha []

f you have an itinerary try using www.railsaver.com for a recommendation on which, if any, rail pass is the best deal for your itinerary.  Follow the “I have a good idea of my itinerary” route and click “I prefer using railpasses (to point to point tickets) ‘only when it saves money.’”

A Select pass to use on the long and expensive trips in France, Benelux, Germany,   Austria  and rmaybe Italy (point to point tickets are often as cheap and more convenient than a railpass in Italy) will probably be your best deal.  In a month you’ll probably take 8 to 10 trips that are long enought to make a railpass pay so buy a pass for that many days — fewer if you’re planning to use point to point tickets in Italy.

You don’t always get a good nights sleep on a night train and it can be uncomfortable and disorienting to arrive in a strange city at morning rush hour when you can’t check into your lodging or sometimes even ditch your bags until mid afternoon.  I ususally limit overnight trains to no more than 1 a week.   

Sounds like very good advice.  Are there usually lockers in the stations?  I was thinking we could ditch our packs in a locker until we could get into the hostel.
 
I can usually sleep just about any place I lay my head, but my wife on the other hand is a little more picky about where she sleeps.
 
I was thinking about doing the 10 day 5 country EURAIL select pass.  The only thing I am a little concerned about is using the train to make day trips.  We were planning on staying in Paris, but traveling by rail to Rouen and other smaller towns around Paris (The same plan for other cities like Munich).  If we purchased a ten day pass and paid for our tickets when making day trips would that be a financially smart decesion?
 
Thanks for the help,
 
Corey

Well, according to SNCF (French railroads) website regular one-way from Paris to Rouen is 19.30 Euro, that’s 38.60 Euro round trip per person, a lot less then a day on a rail pass. For day trips in Germany you can often use regional tickets that cost around 20 euro per day for two (sometimes five) people.

In fact it seems to me that with your route point to point tickets may actually be a cheaper option. IMHO, as a rule of thumb, trips should average 4-5 hours per travel day for a pass to provide better value over regularly priced tickets. Not to mention all kinds of special offers you can get if you plan ahead and commit to specific travel dates/times.

Again, put up an approximate itinerary and compare.

The RailSaver website makes things a little easier to understand.  If I call them maybe they can give me their “expert” opinion???
 
The RailSaver site told me I should purchase the following:
 
Chunnel ticket from London-Paris
5 country 8 day EURAIL pass

You better ask OldLady for her expert opinion. [] Which cities did you enter?

This sounds like a reasonable recommendation, but you’ll never know exactly what’s cheapest until your trip is over and you know which specials were available for which days.  Point to point tickets for day trips will almost always cost less than using a day of a railpass.  I’d probably go with the railsaver recommendation — if it ends up costing a few dollars more than the best possible option it will only be a small fraction of the cost of your trip — you’ll blow more on other things. 

A railpass is usually a great deal on the Thalys trains between Paris and Benelux, even though you have to purchase an expensive reservation, but sometimes there are great off-peak specials available at www.Thalys.com that are cheaper than using a day of the railpass.

What are your ages?   The special passholder fare on Eurostar (the chunnel train) will sometimes make a railpass worthwhile IF you’re 26 or over and you’re traveling on a specific day when leisure fares and other specials aren’t available.  If you’re traveling in the middle of a weekday and/or you’re 25 or under, youth fare, leisure fare or other specials will be the same as or cheaper than passholder fare at www.eurostar.com.

You could probably save money if you did something like this:

Fly a budget flight from London to one of the countries – say Austria.

Train through Austria, Germany, Benelux and France. Fly from Paris to Rome on EasyJet.

Obviously you will only have about 4 or 5 nights per country (counting Benelux as one country). I’d think about chopping one of the countries both to save money and allow you to see more in each of the others.

With some or all of these changes you could probably get away with a much cheaper railpass.

 
We will both be 26 at the tiime of our trip.  We both really wanted to see brussels, but it sounds like maybe it would be more reasonable to chop that section out of the trip.
 
Thank you for the recomendations, they have all been very helpful.

Ha yeah, you’d be better off not going to Brussels [] Brugge on the other hand… man I wish I was there right now []
 
 
As for your locker question, every train station in a major city should have at least some lockers. Really the only places that don’t have lockers are places between cities where trains sometimes stop… places that are basically wide-spots on the tracks with like a park bench and a sign hehe