TRAIN TRAVEL
If you are going to travel in France, probably you are going to use the train to get between your destinations, and there are several things that I have learned that I would like to share with you to make your experience as smooth (and cheap) as possible.Firstly, you can buy all of your tickets online (or at minimum you can check all the train times) by going to the official SNCF website. The SNCF is the national company in France in charge of train travel. Here is the link to their homepage: http://www.voyages-sncf.com. If you are going to buy your tickets online there are two things that you should know:
- That you have to have a "carte avec puce" or a credit card with a chip inside of it, and not just a magnetic strip, in order to go into a train station and print off your tickets. If you open a French bank account, your credit card will have the chip, and you will be able to opt for this method of ticket buying. When you buy online, you will receive a confirmation e-mail, and then all that is left for you to do is go to the train station, go to a yellow SNCF automatic ticket distributor (pictured below), and print your tickets. You will need the same credit card that you paid with online.
- If you see a ticket that interests you, but you are not sure you want to commit to buying that ticket at that time, you can reserve a ticket online (with the same price guaranteed) for 7 days. You search for a ticket following the normal process, you select your ticket as though you were going to pay for it, but when you choose how you are going to pay, you choose "Option" (if you are doing this all in French) and then it will describe how the reservation process works, you click ok, and you are good to go for 7 days of reflection before you have to decide. The best part is, if you later decide that you don't want the ticket, you do not have to do anything because after 7 days your reservation is automatically cancelled. You only have to do something if you want to keep your tickets.
Then, in addition to becoming familiar with the online SNCF site, you should also know that it is equally possible to buy your train tickets from a booth within every train station, and sometimes from SNCF boutiques located in malls, etc. In this case, all you will have to do to buy your ticket is show up with a little bit of time before you want to leave (because there are often somewhat long lines at the stations), then tell the person where you want to go, if you have a "carte de réduction" (see the next section), and then pay for your ticket and you are good to go!
IMPORTANT: Whether you buy your ticket online or from a ticket counter in the station, you must stamp your ticket before you get on the train!
As I mentioned above, there is also a reduction card that you may be interested in getting. It is called the Carte 12-25 (carte douze-vingt-cinq, if you are speaking in French) and it costs 50€ and is valid for an entire year. Every time you buy a ticket when you have this card, you will save between 25-60% from the regular price of that ticket, except for promotional tickets which offer no further reductions. If you are a student and are going to be in France for a couple of months, I strongly recommend that you invest in this card the moment you arrive, because it will quickly pay for itself and you will begin saving money on all your future train travel purchases. You can buy one online at the following address: http://www.voyages-sncf.com/services-train/carte-abonnement-train?rfrr=ChoixCarteOuAbo_footer_cartesetabonnements but if you want it is quite easy to buy one from a ticket desk in any SNCF boutique. I personally had this reduction card and I loved it! Especially since I was in France for 10 months, this card probably saved me around 300-500€ in train travel cost, because I was often getting tickets at half price.
AIR TRAVEL
If you are going to fly to get to various destinations around Europe, I personally recommend Ryan Air, an airline company that offers very discount flights to certain destinations around Europe. They are very strict about baggage dimensions and weight, and there are lots of ways to accumulate extra charges, but if you plan ahead well you can get around for an incredibly low price and see a lot of Europe.
TOURISM
If you are looking for ideas on what to do, where to go, or what to see, I recommend that you read through some of my already-blogged adventures or do your own internet research since everyone has different preferences. However, there are two money-saving ideas that I wanted to put in this section of this page, since I know that students don't typically have a lot of money on them for travel.
First, if you are coming to France and you are staying for long enough to merit a student visa (which should be the case for most study abroad students) then you are considered a "Résident Regulier" meaning that you will be treated as a French citizen that is a student for entry into all national monuments. This means that if it belongs on the list of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, YOU GET IN FREE! Here is the URL for the general website: http://www.monuments-nationaux.fr, but if you ever see a website for a castle, or a fortress that you are interested in visiting and it is run by this National Monuments Center, you will get in free upon the presentation of your student visa. To give you an idea, some of the monuments that I visited that qualified were Carcassone the Medieval city, Chateau d'Angers, the Mont Saint Michel, and Chateau de Chambord.
NOTE: If you have your student visa, you get into almost everything for free in Paris. If you go to the Paris tourism website (http://www.parisinfo.com) you can find a list of all the things that are free for you. In my experience, just about everything you can think of is free, with two exceptions; going up the Eiffel Tower (which will cost you 3.5€ if you go to the second floor) and visiting the catacombs. But without paying anything at all you can go up the towers of the Notre Dame, climb to the top of the Arc de Triomph, go into the Centre Georges Pompidou, and enter into many museums such as Musée d'Orsay and the Musée du Louvre. So if you are studying abroad in France, make sure you take advantage of Paris!!
The second thing that I wanted to mention in this section is just a tip if you are interested in visiting some of the Chateaux of the Loire Valley. In France, the Loire Valley is very well known for being the home to hundreds of chateaux of various sizes all along the banks of the Loire river. My husband and I rented bikes from a company set up specifically for Loire tours by bike (http://www.locationdevelos.com) and had a great time biking around from chateau to chateau. However, if you want to go into the chateaux you may find that it gets a little expensive, especially if you are traveling as a couple. With a little bit of research we found a site sponsored by Le Demeure Historique, which offers a "Laisser Passer" card for access into many participating chateaux. For 70€ for both of us (it costs 45€ if you buy an individual pass) we could get into over 150 chateaux and famous gardens around France, many of which were located in the Loire Valley. Therefore we ended up spending 70€ for access into the equivalent of 200-300€ worth of chateaux (I haven't figured out the exact amount we saved). The point is, if you want to visit the chateaux along the Loire river, I recommend you buy the pass, which you can find here: http://www.demeure-historique.org/spip.php?article460. You can also see all the other places you can get in for free all over France, during your other vacations. The card is valid for a full fiscal year, but may not wrap around from December to January, so verify before you purchase it that the dates you need are covered.
Other than that, I do not have too much to say besides, BON VOYAGE!
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