Getting cheap trains

Hi Jo,

In order to get the cheapest tickets, you can book up to 3 months in advance, or 4 months for the Eurostar leg. To get to Barcelona involves a Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord and then a transfer to Gare d'Austerlitz where you can get the night train to Barcelona Franca. It departs at around 8.30pm and gets to Barcelona around 8am the following day. There is a forum post on changing trains in Paris here, and detailed information on Trains to Barcelona on our Destinations pages.

There is also the option to take 2 day trains from Paris to Figueres and then another from Figueres to Barcelona. All told the journey takes about 11hrs.

If you enter your dates into Loco2 and booking hasn't opened you can enter your email address and we will tell you when tickets become available. But you could search a date 3 months from now to get an indication of prices. Kate has written a blog post with tips on booking ahead and getting the best prices here

At the moment we don't have plans to introduce ferries, as we are working on incorporating European rail. If you need advice on ferries, just shout and I'd be happy to point you in the right direction.

Hope that helps!

If all the advance tickets (i.e. the cheapest ones) are sold out on Loco2 it is also worth checking Renfe to see if there are any extra Turista fares there. They only make a certain number of the cheapest fares available to agents so you might get lucky and find a bargain. If you're not fixed on dates you can use the site to search one day forward or back until you find a fay with a bargain berth Elipsos ticket - if there is one!