Visitors from outside Europe - (Booking Trains from Paris)

Booking a train from Paris to Agde from abroad

For visitors from outside of Europe, rail travel from either Paris CDG airport or from Barcelona is always worth investigation. But! Visitors from USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand should be aware that, for them in particular, there are many hidden obstacles in the way of finding the full range of ticket prices, especially the heavily discounted advance tickets.

Few agencies outside of Europe, if any, do not offer or even have access to the full range of tickets. Worse still, the TGV-Europe web site, which is the English language version of the French Railways (SNCF) site is known to filter offers dependent upon the country of origin of the enquirer. UK residents can get the full range of tickets from `Rail Europe' and have them sent to a UK address.

For everyone, the best option is to buy direct from the French Railways (SNCF) web site, pay in Euros and either collect the tickets at any French rail station or (for a small extra charge) have them posted to an address in Europe. For some people, the fact that the SNCF web site is in French is seen as an insuperable problem. Other than take their chances with the TGV-Europe site, their only option is to resort to the Rail-Europe site and find their own solution to the attendant problems of ticket delivery outside of the UK.

For a much more detailed guide through this minefield try feeding "Seat61" into Google.

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