A Bad Investment

After a lot of discussions with friends who went travelling in the past, we decided to shell out $470 dollars for 10 day, 3 country EU rail passes. We were told that some of the benefits were that the EU rails typically run in the heart of many cities which makes it easier to get around as opposed to airports which are often on the outskirts of cities.

Our travel agents encouraged us to purchase the EU rail passes and told us that we could not purchase them in Europe. However, they did not adequately explain what the EU rail actually is. From my understanding, each country has one or two railways which sign on to be part of the EU rail system. With these passes you can ride for free BUT only on these select railways.

So far, we have had nothing but issues using the EUrail passes and it has proven to be a bad investment. None of the ferries included travel to the cities we want to go to and the train rides that we get for "free" are only 10-20 euros anyways (I figure I need to spend at least 45 euros worth of "free" travelling per day for the EU rail to be worthwhile).

We are hoping that this pass works a bit better in Italy and France because it has been useless in Greece. We've paid over 250 euros in ferry costs, paid for shuttles and taxis just to get to the appropriate EU rail stations. In addition, the train rides have proven to take a LONG TIME to each town.

If this continues to be the case for the rest of the trip, Travel Cuts better get ready for some unhappy customers when we return to Canada. For future reference, fly domestically. RyanAir has like 20 euro flights that not only get you there faster but also is cheaper.