Paris to Venice to Rome

[Greg S]

My wife and I are taking a trip next summer to Europe hitting London, Paris, Venice, and Rome.

It's been pretty straight-forward getting the flights to London and home from Rome, but I'm curious the best ways to move in continent.

Planning on taking a train from London to Paris, but that's changeable if there is a better way. I'd like to get as much travel as possible paid for with points. Sitting on about 250K MR and another 150K UR.

My big question is what is the best way to get from Paris to Venice June 20, 2016. And should I just take trains inside Italy? Can you use points to pay for trains (other than the obvious converting points to dollars and paying that way).

 

[Mountain Trader]

Between Paris and London, take the Eurostar train. Tickets go on sale as early as six months prior to travel and the cheap ones go early and fast. There are cheap airfares between the two cities but getting to airports on both sides is a PIA. If you just gotta use miles, try BA flights using BA Avios. But really, take the train.

Paris to Venice on June 20? This is a job for the ITA Matrix:

https://matrix.itasoftware.com/#view-flights:research=PARVCE

Note that Paris has two airports-CDG and Orly, which for this purpose are about the same overall. I have never flown in or out of Venice so I can't help there, though I would read carefully as Venice' geography makes evrything suspect.

Inter-Italy is a train trip for us. For all the scoop on trains in Italy-or anywhere-check the ManinSeat61 website. No way I know of to use points for trains, but the Italy trains are cheap, and so is the Eurostar if you buy early.

 

[Greg S]

That's awesome advice, thank you. Looks like I'll be waiting a bit to book the trains.

 

[nrdk]

Definitely set a calendar reminder for yourself when the London to Paris Eurostar goes on sale, as he mentioned the cheap seats go quick and the price only goes one way.

 

[Mountain Trader]

Check my six month estimate on the Eurostar-I haven't booked that for a while and it may have changed. You need to get those early as a few weeks later they can be 5 or 6 times more expensive.

Also, Veuiling (see that ITA result) is a low cost subsidiary of Iberia. I believe you can use BA Avios to book Veuling flights. If so, you could load up on BA Avios with a Chase BA credit card assuming availability holds up. I have flown FCO to Orly on Veuling and it's fine.

Of course, watch your total cc apps if any Chase UR card apps are in your plans.

 

[Barb]

If you decide to fly between London and Paris (or miss the super cheap Eurostar fares), it is 4500 Avios points (peak) or 4000 (offpeak) plus $27.50 to fly BA. BA offers Reward Flight savers which keeps the taxes to $27.50 for a BA flight under 600 miles as long as you have earned at least 1 Avios in the prior year. So transferring your URs to BA would count for that.

I personally don't mind going to LHR/LGW or CDG airports since public transit is so good at either end. And another vote for maninseat61. He is the absolute expert on train travel!

 

[smittytabb]

My wife and I are taking a trip next summer to Europe hitting London, Paris, Venice, and Rome.

It's been pretty straight-forward getting the flights to London and home from Rome, but I'm curious the best ways to move in continent.

Planning on taking a train from London to Paris, but that's changeable if there is a better way. I'd like to get as much travel as possible paid for with points. Sitting on about 250K MR and another 150K UR.

My big question is what is the best way to get from Paris to Venice June 20, 2016. And should I just take trains inside Italy? Can you use points to pay for trains (other than the obvious converting points to dollars and paying that way).

Flights within the continent can be scary cheap because there are so many discount carriers in Europe. A lot of people don't realize that those fights are not always listed in the normal search engines. Check out

http://www.skyscanner.com/

I go to Europe all the time and I also really like the train. Just don't use Rail Europe as it is much more expensive than using the website each country has for their own rail system. The Man in Seat 61 website is a good lead as well here.

 

[MickiSue]

Trenitalia is easy to use for travel within Italy. I'd recommend looking at the site to see the frequency of trains, and if you need to change trains to get from VCE to Rome. My guess is yes; and Milan is my guess for where you'd change trains.

But don't bother reserving ahead of time. The stations have kiosks that will talk to you in English if you request (look for the Union Jack), and you can see the different prices for seats from VCE to Rome.

 

[Matt]

Trains are great. Weirdly, if you have a UK address you are able to transfer Avios into Avios and pay for Eurostar with them. I'd certainly recommend the trains in Italy, though watch out for a scam where they try to extort money from you.

You not only need to buy a ticket, but you must 'validate' it. You need to punch the ticket into a secondary machine to prove that you were going to use it for that journey. A conductor attempted to get 100 Euro as a fine from us from not doing this, unfortunately for him, he was dealing with me.. it went a bit like this:

 

[MickiSue]

Heh, Matt, I forgot that part of my mini instructions. The great thing is that the word is Italian is to "obliterate" the ticket, and I always imagine a big splotch of ink when I punch the ticket into the machine.