SNCF has a nice Flash Sale for TGV INOUI until December 4. You can buy tickets for €19 from Paris to Marseille, Avignon and a few other destinations, with travel dates from January 6 to February 5. I took a peek and it looks like there's a lot of availability, sometimes even cheaper.

I was writing about some cancelled routes for the night trains but also about some good news. Since I'm starting to make sense out of the new changes, I will start to present them, in no particular order. The first one, probably useful only to me, is the shorter route towards Italy. While right now it takes almost nine and a half hours to get from Vienna to Trieste, starting December 14, it will take around six and a half hours. Price-wise, €52,60 for two adults and our kid, one way with seat reservations. While Trieste might not be the best place to start exploring Italy, it definitely is an interesting one. Next, I will (probably) focus on Vienna to Paris, since the direct night train was cancelled.

Since my main travelling countries are Austria, Italy and France, I want to present ways to reduce prices for families. It's one thing to buy a ticket for yourself, but the prices hit differently when you need to pay three or four times that price. In Austria, I recommend the ÖBB "Vorteilscard Family". You can buy it online for the price of €19 for an adult and its validity is one year. If the price isn't discounted (Sparschiene Ticket), the adults pay 50% while the kids travel for free. You still have to pay €3 to reserve the seats for adults when it's the case. As a practical example, our family of two adults and a child travels for the price of one adult. In France, you can use "Carte Avantage Adulte TGV INOUI", where it is enough to be purchased by only one of the two parents, for €49. It gives a 30% discount for you, 30% for an adult who accompanies you, and a 60% discount for kids. It also puts a cap on maximum prices that you can pay, so you should check it out before travelling to France. They also have a lot of regional solutions. With Italy, it's simpler because there's no need to pay extra. The family options are included in the total price if you search for them in advance because they apply for a limited time (eg, no less than 15 days for FRECCIAROSSA tickets).

If anyone is interested, you can already book the night train Paris - Berlin from European Sleeper, starting March 26. https://www.europeansleeper.eu/

On the second day, Verona to the South of France I started with a quick 1h13m ride with Frecciarossa between Verona Porta Nuova and Milano Centrale. It was coming from Venice, so a 10-minute delay was somehow understandable, while having multiple bookings on the same seat wasn't, but the train was pretty empty, so it wasn't a headache. In Italy, take an hour between trains because it's a rare event to have them on time. The next train was from Milano Centrale to Ventimiglia at the French border and the trip took 3h44m with a regular InterCity. For the French train, I buy the tickets right before boarding because the price doesn't fluctuate, being a regular TER, and I prefer to hop on at a convenient time. From here, it takes a few minutes to get to Menton, as in my previous example, but you can get to Monte Carlo, Nice, Antibes and Cannes, among many other places. The longest ride, for a little over two hours, is to Grasse, also known as the World's Capital of Perfume, which I highly recommend at least for a day trip. #trainstr

The first day, I travelled from Vienna to Verona with a stop in Innsbruck. While the trip from the Central Station to Innsbruck takes about 4h15m, my trip from the secondary train station was about 8 minutes shorter. This trip was with the regular RailJet train (my autocorrect modified it to RegioJet a few times, but this is correct), nothing out of the ordinary. After a 1h46m break in Innsbruck, we got into the new generation RailJet, which was en route from Munich to Venice. I attached only one interior picture because the train was packed, but even the 2nd class looks great. Time-wise it was 3h26m. We had an overnight stay in Verona, and the next days I'll come back with the Verona to the South of France route. #trainstr

By chance, I took the route that I previously proposed, from Vienna to Menton, but I went a bit further away, and with some changes. The starting point wasn't Vienna Central Station, but a secondary station in Vienna called Meidling Bahnhof. It was recently renovated and I was curious about the results. I'll start posting brief notes in the next days. Until then, here's Meidling Train Station. Small but nice and more peaceful, rarely with tourists.

There's a promo these days for Paris & Montpellier to Barcelona. I attached two screenshots for January.