Europe - Mergi prin lume

Interrail pass: how it works in practice

Mergiprinlume — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 05:28:58 +0000

A rail pass looks like unlimited travel and is not quite. The Interrail pass gives you access to most of the European rail network, but on a growing number of trains you still pay a compulsory reservation on top, and that is where the budget goes wrong.

What the passes are, how travel days work, the reservation trap explained properly, when a pass is worth it and three routes you can copy.

What an Interrail pass actually is

They are the same product with two names. Interrail is sold to residents of Europe, Eurail to everyone else. Both give access to the national rail networks of around 33 countries.

The great termini are the junctions of any rail trip. Photo: Pexels

One important limit: with an Interrail pass you get a restricted number of journeys in your own country of residence, usually two, so it is not a way to travel cheaply at home.

German regional trains take the pass with no reservation at all. Photo: Pexels

The types of pass

Global pass: all participating countries, the standard choice for a multi country trip.
One country pass: cheaper, and often the better buy for Italy, Spain, Germany or Norway alone.
Flexi: a number of travel days used within a longer window, for example 7 days within a month.
Continuous: unlimited travel for a fixed block, for example 15 days straight, which suits fast moving trips.
Youth, adult and senior pricing, with a discount under 28 and over 60.
First and second class, where first class is rarely worth the difference on regional trains.

Travel days and the night train rule

A travel day runs from midnight to midnight and you can take as many trains as you like within it. This is why sensible planning groups several short hops onto one day rather than spreading them out.

A couchette: four or six simple berths and the best value on board. Photo: Pexels

Night trains have their own rule: if you board after 7pm on a direct train that arrives the next day, the journey generally uses only the first day, not both. That makes overnight trains double value, saving a travel day and a hotel night at once.

The advantage of rail: the journey between places becomes part of the trip. Photo: Pexels

The reservation trap

This is the part that surprises everyone. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and most of eastern Europe, you board regional and intercity trains with the pass and nothing else. That is what the pass was designed for.

In Italy, France and Spain the high speed trains need a paid reservation. Photo: Pexels

In France, Spain, Italy and Portugal, the high speed trains require a paid seat reservation on top of the pass, typically between 10 and 30 euros, and the quota of pass seats on each train is limited. On busy routes they sell out weeks ahead.

Switzerland is the country where the pass pays for itself fastest. Photo: Pexels

How to avoid paying twice
Build the route through countries where reservations are not required, and take slower regional trains where they are. Milan to Venice on a regional train costs nothing extra with a pass and takes an hour longer than the fast one. On a two week trip that habit saves more than a hundred euros.

When a pass is worth it and when it is not

A pass wins when you are moving often, when you want the freedom to change plans, when you travel in countries with high walk up fares like Switzerland and Norway, and when you use night trains.

On classic trains without reservations the pass is at its best. Photo: Pexels

It loses when you have a fixed itinerary booked months ahead, because advance point to point tickets in Germany, Italy and Spain can be extremely cheap, and when your route runs mainly on French or Spanish high speed lines where you pay reservations anyway.

Three routes you can copy

Ready made itineraries
Route	Shape
Central Europe	Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow
Alpine	Zurich, Lucerne, Interlaken, Milan, Tirano, Bernina
Mediterranean	Barcelona, Marseille, Nice, Genoa, Rome, Naples
Reservations needed	few, several, many, in that order
Best pass	7 in 1 month flexi for all three
Night trains	Vienna to Rome, Munich to Venice, Paris to Nice

The best views are on the slow lines, not the fast ones. Photo: Pexels

Slow regional lines are usually reservation free and always cheaper. Photo: Pexels

Practical advice

The pass is now a mobile ticket in an app, and you activate each journey before boarding. Keep a screenshot and a charged phone, because a dead battery means travelling without a valid ticket.

A 40 to 50 litre backpack is the reasonable maximum. Photo: Pexels

Pack light. Almost no European train has a proper luggage system, and a large case in a busy carriage is the fastest way to make enemies. Pass conditions are published on the official Interrail site, and route and reservation details are documented in detail at the Man in Seat 61.

Night trains save a travel day and a hotel night at the same time. Photo: Pexels

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

What is the difference between Interrail and Eurail?

They are the same product. Interrail is sold to residents of Europe, Eurail to everyone else. The conditions and the network are otherwise identical.

Do I still have to pay for seat reservations?

On high speed trains in France, Spain, Italy and Portugal, yes, typically 10 to 30 euros each. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and most of eastern Europe, usually not.

Is a rail pass cheaper than buying tickets?

It depends on how you travel. It wins if you move often, change plans and use expensive countries like Switzerland and Norway. Advance point to point tickets can beat it on a fixed itinerary.

How do travel days work?

A travel day is midnight to midnight and covers as many trains as you like. Grouping several short journeys into one day is the main way to make a flexi pass go further.

How do night trains count?

Boarding a direct night train after 7pm usually uses only the departure day, not the arrival day. That saves a travel day and a night of accommodation at once.

Can I use the pass in my own country?

With Interrail, only for a limited number of journeys, usually two, at the start and end of the trip. It is not a domestic travel pass.

Do I need to print anything?

No. The pass lives in the mobile app and you activate each journey before boarding. Carry a power bank, because a dead phone means no valid ticket.

Which route is best for a first trip?

Central Europe: Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Krakow. Distances are short, reservations are rarely required and the trains are frequent.

Conclusion

A rail pass is a very good deal for people who move often and a poor one for people with a fixed plan booked months ahead. Which of those you are decides everything.

Route through the reservation free countries, take the slow trains where the fast ones charge, use night trains, and keep the phone charged.

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Game of Thrones filming locations you can visit

Mergiprinlume — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 06:58:32 +0000

The Game of Thrones filming locations that people actually travel for come down to two places at opposite ends of Europe: Dubrovnik, which supplied the walled capital, and Northern Ireland, which supplied everything cold, green and northern. This guide separates what was really shot on site from what was built in a studio in Belfast.

You will find what was filmed where, what you can genuinely see on the ground, what to skip, and how to link the locations into a route that works rather than a list of pins on a map.

Game of Thrones filming locations: why these two places

The production needed two things that rarely occur together: an intact fortified medieval city that could carry a Mediterranean capital, and a large supply of empty coast, forest and ruin within an hour of a single production base.

The old town from above, almost two kilometres of walls around it. Photo: Pexels

The first season was actually filmed in Malta. From the second season the capital moved to Dubrovnik and stayed there, while Northern Ireland served as the base for the whole ten-year run, with the interiors built in converted warehouses in Belfast.

The Dubrovnik walls: the complete circuit

This is where most of what reads as the capital was filmed. The walls run almost two kilometres around the old town, and the circuit takes between one and two hours depending on how often you stop.

Fort Bokar, at the western corner of the walls. Photo: Pexels

The route is one way, clockwise, with three entrances: near the Pile gate, near the Ploce gate and by the maritime museum. Starting at Ploce is the least crowded option and puts the best light behind you in the morning.

Lovrijenac, on a thirty-seven metre rock, used as the Red Keep exterior. Photo: Pexels

What time you go up matters enormously
There is almost no shade on the walls and the stone radiates heat. In summer, between eleven and four, the circuit is genuinely unpleasant and occasionally dangerous for anyone who struggles in heat. Go at opening, around eight, or in the last two hours before closing. Take water: the few stalls on the walls charge what they like.

An honest warning about Dubrovnik
The city was already taking far more visitors than it could hold before the series, and the success of the show pushed it further. The authorities now cap the number of people inside the walls at any one time and limit cruise arrivals. If you come in July or August you will be one of a very large number of people doing exactly the same thing, and no guide can fix that. May, June, September and October are meaningfully better.

Lovrijenac fortress and the bay below

The fortress on a thirty-seven metre rock, just outside the western walls, served as the exterior of the royal keep. It is a separate structure from the wall circuit but the same ticket usually covers both.

The Stradun, paved in polished limestone, used for the crowd scenes. Photo: Pexels

Above the entrance is carved a Latin inscription saying, in essence, that liberty is not sold for all the gold in the world. It was there four centuries before any of this and remains the best thing about the building.

From the upper terrace you get one of the best views of the old town. The bay below, between the fortress and the walls, is where several sea-level scenes were shot, and it is a swimming spot for locals.

Through the city: the Stradun, stairs and parks

Inside the walls almost every street was used at some point. A few places are recognisable enough to be worth seeking out deliberately.

The old port. Boats to Lokrum leave from here. Photo: Pexels

The Stradun, the main street paved in polished limestone, appears in the crowd scenes and processions. It is also the best place to understand how small the old town actually is: it takes four minutes to walk end to end.

The Jesuit stairs, eighty-odd baroque steps climbing to the church of St Ignatius, are where the walk of atonement began. They are free, always open, and busier with photographers than with worshippers.

Lokrum, which played the desert city in the second season. Photo: Pexels

Gradac park, outside the walls to the west, hosted a wedding that ended badly. It is an ordinary public park with pines and a view of the sea, and it is the quietest of the locations.

Trsteno arboretum, about eighteen kilometres north, founded around 1492 and one of the oldest in this part of Europe, played the palace gardens. It is a genuine botanical collection and worth the trip on its own merits.

Lokrum, the island that played the desert city

The green island in front of the port, fifteen minutes by boat, played the eastern trading city in the second season. It is a nature reserve with peacocks, a ruined Benedictine monastery and a small salt lake.

The view from Srd hill, reached by cable car in four minutes. Photo: Pexels

In the visitor centre there is a replica of the throne, given to the city by the producers when filming ended. It is free to sit on and there is usually a queue.

One important practical point: you cannot stay overnight on Lokrum. The last boat leaves in the evening and there is no accommodation, by law and by tradition, since the island carries a medieval curse that locals treat with more seriousness than you might expect.

The view from Srd hill

The cable car climbs the hill behind the city in four minutes, to over four hundred metres, and from the top you see everything at once: walls, roofs, Lokrum and the islands beyond.

The Dark Hedges, planted in the eighteenth century, used as the kingsroad. Photo: Pexels

The installation was built in 1969, destroyed during the 1991 siege and only rebuilt in 2010. In the fort at the top there is a museum about that siege, which is a useful and sobering correction to a day spent on television locations.

If you would rather not pay for the cable car, a switchback path climbs in about an hour, but it is completely exposed and should not be attempted in the middle of a summer day.

What is not in Dubrovnik: Split, Klis and Sibenik

A common confusion: several scenes people look for in Dubrovnik were filmed two or three hours up the coast.

The cellars of Diocletian palace in Split served as the dragon vaults. The fortress of Klis, above Split, was the eastern slave city. The cathedral at Sibenik played a bank interior. None of these are in Dubrovnik and no amount of walking around the old town will find them.

They do link naturally into a coastal drive, which is the sensible way to combine them: Dubrovnik for two or three days, then north along the coast with stops.

Northern Ireland: Winterfell at Castle Ward

The northern castle courtyard, where the archery is shot in the first episode, is the farmyard of an eighteenth-century estate on the shore of Strangford Lough.

The main house, run by the National Trust, is an architectural curiosity in its own right: one facade is classical and the other Gothic, because the couple who built it could not agree and simply did half each.

There is now a full visitor offer: you can shoot arrows in the actual courtyard, hire costumes, and cycle the estate trails. It is the most commercially developed of the locations and, for families, the most enjoyable.

Details and opening times are on the National Trust page for Castle Ward.

The Dark Hedges, the most photographed road

The beech avenue on Bregagh Road, near Stranocum, became the kingsroad. It was planted in the eighteenth century by a family who wanted an impressive approach to their house, and it has outlived the house.

Ballintoy, the most convincing of the Northern Irish locations. Photo: Pexels

Three things to know before going. First, the road is closed to traffic, precisely to protect the tree roots, so you park nearby and walk. Second, storms have brought down several of the trees and the avenue is thinner than it was in the early seasons. Third, it is small, and at midday in summer there are more people than trees.

The solution is simple and it works: come at sunrise. The light coming sideways through the trunks is far better anyway, and for the first hour of the day you will have it more or less to yourself.

The Antrim coast: Ballintoy, Larrybane, Cushendun

The densest concentration of locations sits on about thirty kilometres of coast between Ballycastle and Portrush, which is also one of the finest coastal drives in Europe independently of any television.

Dunluce castle on the Antrim coast, part of the same driving route. Photo: Pexels

Ballintoy harbour is the most convincing of them all. A tiny fishing harbour at the end of a narrow, steep road, it played the iron islands and needed almost no set dressing.

Larrybane quarry, beside the car park for the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, hosted an army camp and a duel. The rope bridge itself, thirty metres long and thirty metres above the water, is not a location but is worth crossing anyway.

The Giants Causeway. Not a filming location, but on the same road. Photo: Pexels

The Cushendun caves, cut by the sea into rock hundreds of millions of years old, are where a famously unpleasant birth scene was filmed. They are free, take ten minutes and are directly beside a car park.

Downhill beach, with the Mussenden temple perched on the cliff above, played a fortress island. And along the same road lies the Giants Causeway, sixty million years of hexagonal basalt, which appears in no episode and is the best thing on the coast.

Tollymore forest, where the very first scene of the series was shot. Photo: Pexels

Tollymore and the Mourne forests

The very first scene of the very first episode, the patrol beyond the wall, was filmed in Tollymore forest park, at the foot of the Mourne mountains.

Tollymore was, in 1955, the first place designated a forest park in Northern Ireland. It has marked trails along the river, stone bridges and gothic follies, and it is a genuinely good walk regardless of what was filmed there.

The Mourne mountains around it are said to have given C.S. Lewis the landscapes of Narnia. They rise straight out of the sea and are, for their modest height, unusually dramatic.

Belfast: windows, doors and studios

The city was the logistical base of the production for a decade, and the traces are in the urban landscape in unexpected forms.

Six large stained glass windows are installed along a route linking the Titanic quarter to the centre, each depicting a house or a storyline. They are free and permanently on view.

When a storm brought down several of the Dark Hedges beeches, the timber was recovered and carved into ten heavy doors, each installed in a pub somewhere in Northern Ireland, usually near a location. Collecting them is a pub crawl with a theme.

The interiors cannot be visited
The throne room, the crypt, the ships and most of the interior sets were built in the Belfast studios, which are not open to the public as a working facility. There is a separate ticketed studio experience with original sets and costumes, which is well done, but it is not the same as walking onto the sound stage. Anyone expecting to visit the studios themselves will be disappointed.

While in Belfast, the Titanic quarter is worth the time on its own account: the ship was built here and the museum devoted to it is among the best of its kind in Europe.

Itinerary and logistics

The two destinations do not connect. They are at opposite ends of Europe with no direct flight, and they are treated as two separate trips.

How much time each needs
Destination	Days	Transport
Dubrovnik and the walls	2 – 3 days	on foot, no car needed
Dubrovnik plus the Split coast	5 – 6 days	hire car
Northern Ireland locations	3 – 4 days	hire car essential
Belfast city	1 – 2 days	on foot and bus

A car is essential in Northern Ireland
Public transport does not reach most of the locations, and the few services that exist are infrequent. Distances are short, roads are good and driving is on the left. Without a car you are restricted to organised day tours, which work but fix your timing at exactly the hours when the sites are busiest.

Local information is on the Dubrovnik tourist board and on the Northern Ireland tourism site.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

How long does the Dubrovnik walls circuit take?

Between one and two hours for the two kilometres, depending on how often you stop. It is one way, clockwise, with three entrances. Go at opening or in the last two hours before closing to avoid the heat.

Is a themed guided tour worth it or can I go alone?

You can find everything alone with a map, and the walls are self-guided anyway. A themed tour is worth it if you want the specific camera positions and the production anecdotes, which are not marked on the ground.

Can I drive to the Dark Hedges?

No. Bregagh Road is closed to traffic to protect the tree roots. You park nearby and walk in. Come at sunrise: the light is better and the avenue is far quieter than at midday.

Can I visit the Belfast studios?

Not the working studios. There is a separate ticketed studio experience with original sets, props and costumes, which is well made, but the sound stages themselves are not open to the public.

How many days do I need for the Northern Ireland locations?

Three to four days with a hire car: one for Castle Ward and the Mourne forests, one or two for the Antrim coast, and one for Belfast. Public transport does not reach most of the sites.

Is the Giants Causeway a filming location?

No, it appears in no episode. It sits on the same coastal route as several locations and is, on its own merits, the most impressive thing on that coast.

Where is the throne in Dubrovnik?

On the island of Lokrum, in the visitor centre, a replica given to the city by the producers when filming finished. It is free to sit on and there is usually a queue.

When is the best time to visit Dubrovnik?

May, June, September or October. In July and August the old town is at capacity, the walls are punishing in the heat, and the authorities cap the number of people inside at any one time.

Conclusion

The locations worth travelling for are the ones that needed no set dressing: the Dubrovnik walls, Lovrijenac on its rock, Ballintoy harbour and the Dark Hedges at first light. Everything with a throne in it was built in a warehouse in Belfast.

Treat them as two trips rather than one. Dubrovnik in the shoulder season, on foot, and Northern Ireland with a car and three days, starting each morning before the tour buses.

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