Brussels Travel Forum

I was hoping to get some advice about train booking. My girlfriend and I are going to be in Brussels with 4 other friends/2 couples, from March 20-30. We plan on taking a couple of day/2day trips to Paris and Amsterdam. One couple has already bought their Benelux passes and my other two friends are convinced that buying our tickets when we get there is the way to go. All four of them have been there before and I trust their opinions equally. I am hoping an outside, third party perspective can help in making our decision. THANK YOU!!!!

Hi,
I work at the desk for the Belgian Railways and I can assure you that buying your tickets on the day or a few days before departure is NOT a good option if you want to go from Brussels to Paris! Also a BENELUX-pass isn't covering the travel from Brussels to Paris. Your friends will have to buy a ticket just like you for the Thalys (train from Brussels to Paris). Amsterdam is no problem, there are still regular IC trains every hour to Amsterdam and prices are the same if you book it in advance or on the day itself. You didn't mention your age (or your friends age) which is important for international train tickets.
As for Thalys, this is a (more or less) private train company who works with a price system just like airplanes. The earlier you book, the cheapest you travel. They have last minute tickets but these can only be booked online and have to be payed immediatly. If you do so, choose homeprinting or if you want to pick them up in Brussels (at my desk maybe), you have to make the booking through the site of the Belgian Railways which is www.sncb.be. If you book on www.Thalys.com or any other site, you can only collect them in France or at the SNCF boutique in Brussels but this office is only open from monday to saturday from 10 untill 17.
If you need more info just ask me, this is my job (for 9 years allready)!

Ik zie nu pas uw forum-naam. Bent u van Nederland?

Hi Froseje,

I am glad to speak to an expert like you. Maybe you can give me some advice.
I am from NYC and travel to France. I will travel ny to paris take train to Nice for four days than the train from Nice to Paris and stay five days in Paris. I was considering purchaseing the Benelux-France pass through Rail Europe on line. The ticket is $371.00 for 5 days. I plan to take the train in Nice to Monoco and a day trip from Paris to Brussels and maybe one day to Antwerp. The rest of my day in Paris I will to the tourist place, Louve, Notre Dame etc. Do you think i need to purchase a local RER ticket for the Metro. I prefer not to take taxi's Like to know your expert advice. Thank you. Mabel

THANK YOU Froesjel!

I'm afraid I'm not really an expert but I'll help you as good as I can.
First of all it's important to know your dates of travel and your age before I can give you a usefull advice on ticket- or pass purchass.
A France Rail pass can be the cheapest option when you travel around France.
On TGV's (Paris - Nice), you'll still have to pay a reservation fee. In France these fees depend on your time of travel. They have blue and red time-zones. The red ones are the peak hours, so they're more expensive. The fees go from ca. 2€ untill 10€ depending on the hour you want to start to travel.
As for your journey to Brussels, the France Rail Pass only covers the French part of this yourney. The price you'll have to pay then to go from Paris to Brusels is about the same as the youth-fare, so if you're younger than 26 the France Rail Pass has no use for this journey. To travel within Belgium this pass hasn't got any value and there's no youth fare to travel inside Belgium either. The cheapest are the weekend-tickets (inside Belgium).
Please let me know your age and dates of travel to give you more accurate information. Froesjel

Oh, I forgot about the RER ticket. You should buy this but it's cheaper to buy a pass for one or more days.

You have to do a considerable amount of train travel in any country/region to really benefit from a rail pass bought from agencies like Eurail, also Benelux pass does not in any case cover France. I am convinced that most people who buy rail passes only require point-to-point tickets - this is certainly the case for 2 return trips from Brussels to Paris and Amsterdam.
Brussels-Paris you can only do by Thalys and you can buy tickets online from Belgian Railways, http://www.b-rail.be/int/E/, or Thalys (which is a consortium of the Belgian, French, Dutch and German State railways), www.thalys.com. While you can buy tickets at the station up to an hour or so before departure, you risk there being no seats left on the train you want to travel on (in which case you can't travel), and you can only get the cheaper prices if you book about a month in advance. If price isn't important to you, leave it till you get here but then buy your tickets as soon as you arrive, from any station with an international ticket desk (not necessarily the one you will leave from, which is Gare du Midi).
For Brussels-Amsterdam you have a choice between Thalys (reservation only) and normal InterCity trains, I would recommend the latter because they are cheaper and you can catch them at Gare centrale and Gare du Nord as well as Gare du Midi, also you can buy a ticket on the day of departure although you should note that this does not guarantee a seat.

My friends who have bought the Benelux passes are not going to go on our Paris day trip and tell me I should by the Benelux anyway because we will be guaranteed seats (in Belgium and Holland)and it will be relatively the same price since we plan to go on so many small train rides to surrounding cities. Is this a valid argument or not? Should I buy a 5 day Benelux and a separate ticket from Brussels to Paris?

Oh and by the way, I forgot to mention that both my girlfriend and I are under 26 years old.

I have used the Benelux passes 3 times in the recent past. They are good for those little hop on, hop off kind of trips that are so easy to do in these countries, due to their smaller size. Also, from my experience, they are very economical, based upon the cost of regular tickets, for instance, between Brussels & Amsteredam. If two are travelling together, it is even less expensive per person. And you don't have to keep standing in line for tickets.
Obviously they are not good for Paris, but the combined Benelux/France ticket could be the answer (except for Thalys).

A Benelux-pass for 5 days costs 99€. So I guess that's the cheapest you can get if you plan on making a lot of small trips also. For example, a ticket from Brussels to Amsterdam costs 22,60€ (youth fare) one way.
Still, your friends are wrong about the guaranteed seats. On the regular trains inside Belgium and Holland, you can't make reservations which means seats won't be guaranteed either. For Thalys you'll allways have to pay for a reservation.
A youth-fare ticket from Brussels to Paris costs 40,50€ one way and the number of seats for this fare are also limited. Because it's Easter-holiday from the 22nd of March it could be wise to buy these tickets at least a few days in advance.

As for Paris...if you only have a day...I recommend the TGV for getting there. From Mons, Belgium it is only 45 minutes and it's the best way to go. Not sure if it leaves from Brussels or not but it is SUPER easy to get to Mons (or Bergen as the flemmish say) from Brussels and it's about a 1 Hour train ride. Hope that helps.

1) "My friends ....tell me I should by the Benelux anyway because we will be guaranteed seats (in Belgium and Holland)". Nope, only a seat reservation guarantees seats and you can't reserve on local trains unless you are a group of about 15. What it guarantees is that you will be carried, but whether you have a ticket or a pass, you have no guarantee whatsoever of a seat. On sunny weekends I have had to stand all the way from Brussels to Ghent (these trains continue to coastal resorts) but it's relatively rare.
2) "..and it will be relatively the same price since we plan to go on so many small train rides to surrounding cities. Is this a valid argument or not?" I can't tell, it depends on exactly how many rides you would be going on to how many surrounding cities, and whether these are in Belgium or also in the Netherlands, and how many would be on weekdays and how many at weekends (when return trips are almost half price).. Certainly it would be more convenient than buying individual tickets, but you would have to give an itinerary for anyone to be able to cost it (using this site for trips within Belgium: http://sefora.b-rail.be/sefora/Sefora/berekenen.do?action=accessTicket&langue=3).
3) "Should I buy a 5 day Benelux and a separate ticket from Brussels to Paris? I can't tell whether you should buy a 5-day Benelux pass, you haven't said how much you would be paying or where you would be going with it, but you would have no choice but to buy a separate ticket from Brussels to Paris, and by train you have no option but to go by Thalys (which IS a TGV or high-speed train), which takes 1h21 from Gare du Midi (Bruxelles-Midi in timetables), see www.thalys.com.
4) As you are under 26, another possibility within Belgium alone is the Go Pass, which costs only €46 for 10 single trips (or 5 return ones) anywhere in Belgium (i.e. €4.60 per trip), see http://www.b-rail.be/nat/E/tarifs/passes/go/
Note also that as this pass is not nominative, you can (as long as you are both under 26) use it between the 2 of you, just like the multi-trip cards we have for trams and buses.