How to buy a train ticket in France?

This post is all about how to buy a train ticket in France!

Once you’ve arrived in Paris, and you’ll have visited all the amazing sights, you might want to venture outside of the French capital. The perfect way to travel in France is by train. But how to book your train ticket? I’ll show you the step-by-step guide to booking your train ticket and being a pro at traveling in France.

As with any other means of travel, the earlier you book your train, the better! They will be the cheaper. Unless you are planning on traveling over a long weekend that has a public holiday. In which case your train tickets might be quite expensive, even a few months in advance. You can book your train tickets up to 4 months in advance.

Are you ready to visit France like a true French person? Let’s go!

This post is all about booking your train ticket in France!

 

Booking your train tickets in France

 

Buy your tickets in-store

The French train company is called SNCF. If you’re already in France, and you’re looking to buy a train ticket, you could go directly to an SNCF store.

To find the store closest to you, you can type in the name of the city or the exact address of your hotel into the search bar of the store locator.

The best time to go to the store is either very early in the morning or during the day but avoid lunchtime (between noon and 2 pm) and after 5 pm. The queue might be quite long at those times.

Once you managed to get into the store and found a clerk, you’ll have to give the following information:

• where you would like to go ( and if your train journey should have various stops be sure to let them know too!)
• when you would like to go and come back
• how many travelers would take part in the journey
• any preference you could have in terms of seats: window, aisle, road facing, the family corner…
• if you’d like a first-class or second class ticket

They’ll find the best journey for your French travels, and they’ll print the tickets for you or you could ask to have them sent to your email address if you preferred.

You could also choose to book your tickets online.

 

Buy your tickets online

To buy your train ticket online, you’ll need to go to the SNCF website (currently only available in French).

 

Step 1: Where to go?

Enter the name of the city you wish to visit. in the below tab..in French!

 

Step 2: You’ll need to fill in a few fields:

• “Départ”: you’ll have to enter the city from which you will depart

• “Aller”: the departure date
• “Ajouter un retour”: add a return date, and a return time

Then you’ll have to add the number of travelers (up to 9). To add more than 1 traveler, click on the + button in the “Voyageur” section.

Here the most important information is the age bracket of the travelers and if there is anyone in a situation of handicap (you’ll have to tick the box “Voyageur en situation de handicap”).

Once everything is selected or ticked, you can click on “Appliquer ce profil”. This will bring you back to the previous screen.

Once everything is filed in, you just have to click on the tab “Voir les prix”, to have the list of trains departing and their respective prices.

 

Step 3: Chose your travel journey

At this stage you will be shown a screen similar to the one below, depending of course on the destination you chose:

You’ll have to choose the best time to depart. Beware of the following:

• where are the train stations located, some trains might be significantly cheaper than others, and this could be explained by the fact that the train stations are outside of the city you are in/will be arriving in.
• is it a direct train journey, or will you have to change trains somewhere? If you look at the red arrows above, you’ll see one pointing to “1 correspondance” and the other to “Direct”. You’ll want to prefer the “Direct” trains as much as possible. This will make your traveling much easier!
• you’ll also have to choose if you want to travel in 2n or 1st class. If you look at the blue arrows, the column on the left is 2nd class tickets and on the right 1st class tickets.

Once you’ve chosen the journey of your dreams, click on the price it corresponds to, and click on “Choisir cet aller” (red arrow below):

 

You’ll be asked to choose your preferred seating:

• The blue arrow is where you’ll decide if you want to sit near the window, on the aisle or if you don’t really care
• the red arrow is where you choose if you want to be seated in the direction of motion of the train

Repeat the same process with the return journey.

 

Step 4: Pay and wait for the next adventure!

You are almost done! The last step is to check your booking before paying. You’ll be shown the below screen.

To check your booking, you’ll just have to click on the green “Panier” button at the top right of your screen.

On the next screen, click on the green button “Valider le panier”. You’ll be then asked to provide some personal information about the travelers. Click on the blue text next to the red arrows to fill in all the necessary information.

 

Once you are done, click on “Valider et payer”. It’s time to pay and wait for your travel day to come and begin a new adventure!

 

I hope this post on how to book your train ticket in France has been helpful to you! Do not hesitate to share this post on Pinterest!

 

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