If you’re going to France this summer and your plans involve rail travel, you might want to know that TGV tickets for summer dates are available now. Especially since discounts can sell out.
Usually SNCF, the French rail carrier, starts selling tickets 90 days before the trip, but I just went to review my summer plans, and found a popup that announced that summer tickets are available. Don’t know if they’ve done this before, but it certainly wasn’t the case the last time I needed TGV tickets four years ago.
I was able to buy all three of my segments, for July 23, 28 and August 11 in one transaction on the very-improved SNCF website (http://voyages.sncf.fr) If you use, it, you’ll be offered a chance to switch to Rail Europe; don’t take it. RE is majority-owned by SNCF, but doesn’t offer all trips or all discounts. When you’re asked for the country in which you’ll receive your tickets, just pick any European country, or Antarctic (it’s really a choice there!)–you’ll be getting them by e-mail anyway.
