I have been spending countless hours researching European rail passes. I started getting nervous when I learned that the Eurail pass must pe purchased online before leaving Canada therefore if I was going to purchase a Eurail pass that I would have to make that decision this week. The thing that bugs me the most about the Eurail pass is that you must pay a considerable amount more if one desires flexibility. So I started worrying about buying single country passes or combining neighboring countries (aka a regional pass); I got out my trusty calculator & the math began.
First of all I would like to state that there are a few websites that one can purchase Eurail passes on, the obvious http://www.eurail.com/home and also http://www.raileurope.ca (there are a few versions of raileurope so make sure to be in the Canadian version instead of the U.S. version as prices vary). Both sites are perfectly adequate however I would search both sites because the prices do differ but usually only slightly. For example the Italy 10 day country pass goes for $425 on eurail's website; the exact same pass on raileurope goes for $417. Not a big difference but I still would take the time to search both sites.
My next question became trying to decide if i should add Greece onto an Italy pass. Ten days of travel can be more easily split within two countries. So the Italy ten day pass worked out to about 43$ per each train ticket. If I added Greece it would work out to 50$ per every train ticket (I must also mention that these prices are before taxes so they are not an accurate sum of what the total cost would actually be). But then i started reading all the warnings about the Greek economy and how they have shut down some of their trains! So the idea of cancelling Greece out of my trip surfaced. I wouldn't want to waste my money buying a regional pass if I don't end up going over to the joining country. However 10 days seems like an awful lot of journeys in one country. So after much thought and deliberation and continued research this is what I concluded: the Italy rail pass is only worth the money if one takes really long train trips everytime; taking 10 long train trips seems highly unlikely and also I would miss jumping from smaller towns because it would not be worth it to use my pass on a 10$ shorter trip. Oh I must also state that Italy has additional costs for every single train you get on even with a rail pass! So the original calculation of 43$ a day is so out of the ball park. What I did to come to my conclusion was visit Italy's train website which is http://www.trenitalia.com and I started typing in point to point fares seeing how much it would cost me for each separate train ticket. Obviously the shorter the distance the cheaper the ride; oh boy is it much cheaper! I found train tickets as cheap as 7 euros a ride! That blows the eurail pass out of the water. I read on a travel blog that in order to get the best fare one must book months in advance, so i did the test...
I checked how much a ticket would be during my estimated time of travel and then I compared it to buying a ticket if i were travelling this week. There was either no difference, a slight variation and, in some cases, I actually found cheaper tickets if I were booking for a ride tomorrow. So that put my mind to ease and I decided that I will wait and buy tickets point to point and continue my original plan of being free as a bird!
Back to the Greece dilemna. The trains that have been cancelled are the ones in the northern part of Greece; if one wanted to enter Greece via train only it would be near to impossible as Greece has pretty much shut themselves off from the rest of europe. Except for getting into greece by ferry from Italy! Yipee! I know that if I don't see Greece while travelling through Europe I will regret it immensely; I cannot even believe I considered chopping it out, even if it was only for a brief moment.
There is one decent point about the eurail, you can get discounts on museums if one bears one. However most of the hostels that I've researched offer discounts anyway and I will be bringing my old college id card as well as my alumni card just in case I can smile my way into a museum on a student discount ;)
My last bit of information before I end this long winded post has to do with my journey from Paris to Italy. I first looked up how much it would cost to get from Paris to Venice on the raileurope website and i discovered it would only cost $90! I thought that was great until I looked up the same route in trentalia and it came up as 55 euros (about 70$). I also checked the french train site http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/ and found a train from Paris to Nice for 40 euros. Not too shabby. So I will decide on my own dear sweet time which route I chose to take. I must admit that I am disappointed that the train from Paris to Venice is a night excursion; it goes through Switzerland so I was hoping to be able to stare out the window the entire time taking in the glorious scenery. I may decide to go from Paris to Verona instead as well because Verona is on lake Gard which has the most magnificent views of the mountains. Verona to Venice is a quick little 10$ ride over so it may be worth it too see more scenery. After Venice I will travel along the eastern coastline stopping at various towns until i reach Bari. From Bari a ferry leaves every day (except Sunday) at 8pm and arrives in Patras at 12:30 pm the next day. I am hoping that the weather is nice because I have no problem with sleeping on the deck of the ferry to save from buying a bed inside the ship. We shall see how that trip goes.... Also it may change my route if my friend Pamela wants to join me to Greece, in which case i may do Sicilia before Greece. As Patrick Swayze would sing, "she's like the wind!" Toodles!
This is all so exciting :)
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