Lourdes Travel Forum

We will be visiting Basel Switzerland in October and we would like to take public transportation or we could rent a car to go Lourdes, France over a period of one week.. with possible side trips. Train service in Switzerland from Basel to Geneva is all I found and I can't seem to find anything beyond towards Lourdes. I would appreciate If anybody could advise how to search on the internet for this travel plan. Thanks so much in advance.

It's a roundabout route but to use the train you will need to go from Basel to Paris Est via Strasbourg. Once in Paris Est you can transfer by Metro to
Montparnasse Bien Venue then go up the escalators to Gare Montparnasse where you can get a TGV to Lourdes. It is possible to get from basel to Paris Est without having to change at Strasbourg. Have a look here for details:

http://fahrplan.oebb.at/bin/query.exe/en?OK#focus

It's a 12 hour trip all round but maybe you could overnight in Paris to break the journey. If you do this you can get the TGV directly to Lourdes from Paris Montparnasse at around 10am the next morning. It is about 6.5 hours to Lourdes from Paris Montparnasse.

For international journeys in Europe I always use the German Railways website. It has comprehensive timetables for the whole of Europe, but you cannot make reservations for journeys outside Germany.

It is available in several languages at www.reiseauskunft.bahn.de

The previous poster is probably right in that the most efficient way to get to Lourdes by train from Basel is via Paris.