Paris Travel Answers

I am sorry you are having trouble with the official websites. It may well be because you are trying to book from outside Europe. I suggest that you try Raileurope. The French railway company SNCF is very closely tied in with Raileurope. www.raileurope.com Best (imo) to avoid all the minor websites such as 'euro-railways', 'eurorail' and so on. If you still have trouble booking (which is a possibility even with Raileurope) can I suggest you investigate flying from Paris>Barcelona,perhaps with a budget airline? You can, after all, very easily take a daytrip from either Paris or Barcelona to give your child the 'train' experience. www.skyscanner.net will give you all carriers and (usually) fares for your date and route, but book on the airline's own website.

Thank you so much for your reply, I will consider this option....have a great day

You too! I'll keep my fingers crossed that Raileurope works for you.... :-)

Reservations for rail travel in Europe generally open 90 days before travel. Given the date of your journey, it is possible you are a few days too early to make a booking.

That's a good point, although I thought sleeper accomm trains tended to have longer booking 'windows'?

I agree with cubsur, even on the sncf site, 3 months is three months. The only time I managed to get a ticket outside the 3 months was when I booked a return ticket. The outward journey was within the 3 months but the return was nearly months. But of course for a single this will not work. He'll have to wait for the end of the month.

Do NOT book with anyone except www.tgv-europe.com or at worst, the fee-free Bahnagentur Schöneberg in Berlin, http://www.bahnagentur-schoeneberg.de I, too, can book your ticket and also fee-free except the ca.5 registered mail. I do that for VT-ers but so far it's the last resort. The best is, you can do all that yourself if you are careful and you do not need any agency help if you follow what I an writing. 1) RailEurope is more "smart" now because if anyone is CLAIMING to live outside of Europe they re-direct the victim to the http://www.raileurope-world.com rip-off. This is a new rip-off, Raileurope is known to have very generous price "padding" and if possible, best to avoid. 2) The Hungarian (Albanian, Serbian, Moldovan, Estonian etc.) trick works perfectly. And that is what you should do. a) go to tgv-europe.com/en/choose-cou... b) chose a minor European country without RailEurope agent; Russia is no good - it's not minor to begin with and I think, RailEurope has an agent there. Hungary, Estonia, Albania, Croatia, Serbia are perfect. I did chose Estonia this time for testing. Doing that will force the French web site to keep English instead of switching to German, Dutch, Spanish or Italian. c) I get indeed the error message: "Reservations for the selected trains are not yet available on the date you chose" That means, it's to early. Repeat the procedure in two weeks - and don't forget: you are Estonian, Albanian, whatever resident and NOT from Bahrain. How come? Is it legal? Yes, it is legal. And you can do that. RailEurope does NOT match the issuing country of your credit card and the IP address of your computer where you make the reservation from with the country of claimed residence. Would be foolish, as I may be a Chinese with Canadian credit card now traveling in Argentina but living permanently in Portugal. What it is all about is the ticket delivery. I did proceed with the date of July 31 instead of August 31, just to complete the test. As we already know, August 31 is to early. July 31 had no problem. I got several price options and did chose the 93 Euro "PREM'S", that is in a cabin with four beds. At the end of the reservation you will see the address page. I did click on the "Send the tickets to another person or address" option and used a fictive address in Bahrein. It worked till the end, but: your credit card has to be "Verified by Visa" or participant of "MasterCard Securecode". They also accpet Amex, that has no extra security features to follow. If you do not have Amex than make sure you signed up for "Verified by Visa" or "MasterCard Securecode" verified.visa.com/aam/data/d... mycardsecure.com/vpas/certeg... So wait few days till June 1 and just proceed with the above. If you have any trouble come back and ask.

One more thing: do use FireFox or Chrome, tgv-europe.com cannot handle Safari safely.

"b) chose a minor European country without RailEurope agent (... e.g.) Hungary, Estonia, Albania, Croatia, Serbia (...) Doing that will force the French web site to keep English instead of switching to German, Dutch, Spanish or Italian. I'm sure I managed in the past to make sncf-voyages site stay in English, without switching to RailEurope, using Belgium or even France as "country of residence" (I was testing the often-quoted advice to select "Antarctica"!). Of course, here the issue may be a bit different, i.e. staying with the Rail Europe "international for countries without own agent" site. In these days of worldwide access via internet, I can't understand why so many suppliers continue to divide up markets in the interests of distributors, not consumers. Even at the risk of shooting themselves in the foot, as the sort of problems they encounter (without GyuriFT to advise) might indeed make people give up and book flights instead!

@ Lyn, yes you can check out the times etc in English on the French sncf site, but as soon as you go to book, it changes back, as far as I'm concerned into French. You cannot book in English. Why this glitch, nobody knows. My son works at the sncf, I have a friend quite high up at the sncf, but they haven't been able to find out why either as I've asked them enough.

Hi! Are you using IPad ? Some booking sites do not function via the IPad as they use Flashplayer components. Many booking sites esp the legacy ones have not upgraded their software to be compatible with IPad. The error message often do not give the reason. Try using a conventional PC to access these sites, if not already tried.

Thank you all for all the valuable information, I will sure do as you suggested....I will update you on the results...thank you again

We all want to thank you for your help in getting the night train tickets, we followed your advise & we got them however we choose to pick them up from a French station when we arrive there, Thanks for all of you for making this trip planning easier on us,

Thanks for popping back in.