Riding the rails is a great way to see France
SNCF Avantage passes can knock 30% or more off your fares and you can save substantially more by choosing off-peak travel
Although I always have the option of renting a car to get around Europe, I prefer taking the train, which is usually fast and inexpensive.
How fast? Well, France is famous for its high-speed TGV (train à grand vitesse), the newest of which can reach 320 km/hr. It doesn’t feel that fast when you’re in one, but you don’t want to be standing too close to the tracks when one goes speeding past as you stand on the quai of some rural station (scared the merde out of me one night in Castelsarrasin).
The main French rail agency is SNCF, which has 12 TGV lines and also connects with smaller commuter lines. My trip from Toulouse to Lyon in September, for example, was a mix, with an Intercités train to Montpellier (13€) and a transfer to a TGV from there to Lyon (19€). Normally, the TGV part takes 96 minutes to travel 300 km, but a mudslide near Valences left us parked for 100 minutes as workers cleared the tracks. (I got an 8€ credit for the Lyon delay, knocking my total bill down to 25€.)
Unfortunately, train delays aren’t an uncommon occurrence in France. The system even incorporates automatic credits for compensation, so let’s just say they’re used to it. So try to plan for some flexibility, especially if you have a connection to make.
Flexibility can also help keep your fares down, because ticket prices reflect demand, for the most part. I’ve bought a first-class ticket on one train that was 20€ cheaper than second-class on a busier train. So shopping around is definitely worth it, and the SNCF railway app makes it easy to compare itineraries, including options to take a bus or even a BlaBlaCar covoiturage.
Another thing you need to double-check on some routes is whether you’re going to the right station. I wasn’t paying enough attention to that for Lyon and ended up on a train that went to the airport rather than downtown. Not a huge problem in Lyon, it was just a waste of time and money commuting back downtown. But you don’t want to end up in the wrong station with no way back for hours.
One last warning about trains in general is that wi-fi is often sketchy or non-existent and you can’t always rely on finding an outlet to charge your phone. After several close calls, I have decided to buy one of those portable power banks so that I never run out of juice. (Unless I forget to charge the power bank. In which case, I deserve a dead phone.)
SNCF also offers several Carte avantage programs that can discount your fares by 30% or more, knock 60% off children’s fares, and cap ticket prices at 49€ to 89€, depending on the distance.
Aside from the convenience trains offer, they are also often a great way to appreciate the countryside, especially the train lines running through the Alps and the Pyrenees or along the Mediterranean coast. The train station themselves are often works of art, worth a visit just to appreciate the architecture, which can date back to the Napoleonic era, such as Paris’ Gare du Nord, built in the 1860s, or the Strasbourg station, opened in 1883, a decade after the emperor’s death.
(Video 1, the Mediterranean port town of Sète. Video 2, Paris’ Gare du Nord)
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I’m still in Toulouse, planning the next trip, so I’m afraid there aren’t any new adventures to share for now. But thanks for riding the rails with me today! See you next week.