Hi, My family is planning to take a night train from Paris to Rome this summer, and I had a question about reservations. The Rick Steves website (http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/comparetickets.htm#web) advises to use the tgv.com website and say we are from a european country so the website does not redirect us to Rail Europe. Indeed, this technique seems to yield cheaper fares. I can only order 90 days in advance on this website, but I did a walkthru for an earlier date to see what the ordering experiences and prices would be like. I am interested in getting us into double and/or T4 (4 bed "couchettes") beds for this trip, but I wanted to get at least one of the "rooms" to be just our family so we can sleep in peace without worrying about who might be stealing from our bags. My experience was that the website assigned us to doubles or couchette berths, but they were generally not together in the same room. I checked the help on the tgv website (http://www.tgv-europe.com/europe/WW/...gnation_place/) and it referred to a button called "choose my place". However, there was no such button when I attempted to reserve. I had the opportunity to choose upper or lower berths, but there was nothing allowing me to view the layout of the train and select where our beds/couchettes would be.

I would appreciate any feedback on (1) is this the right website and timeframe in which to reserve 5 beds on the Paris-Rome night train?, and (2) is there any way to have more control over berth assignment.

Thanks in advance!