Take the train in Europe with Scotia Bonus points

Fourth article in my series on a trip to Europe with points & miles.

If you followed me in this adventure, you know that I booked my flights in business class on Swiss and Turkish Airlines with Aeroplan Milesthat my car rental has been fully paid with BMO Rewards pointsand that I found a way to reach the island of Malta from Stuttgart with British Airways Executive Club air miles.

It’s time today to show you how we’ll reach Stuttgart from France, and how I used scotia bonus points to “erase” this expense!

Take the train in Europe with Scotia Bonus points

I planned to return our rental car at the Strasbourg train station.

But first, let’s look at how to book a train ticket in France… and use scotia bonus points to offset the expense!

Booking a train ticket in France

The French National Railway Company (SNCF) has an online booking site which is voyages-sncf.com. You can book anything there, but what we are interested in is train tickets!

Within the European Union, the different national organizations have procedures for selling common train tickets. Thus, you can book a ticket on a French website, for an itinerary that will take place mostly in Germany… on a German high-speed train.

Here is my research:

The site offers me several departure times and the route that catches my attention is this one:

In 2nd class (economy class), the ticket for 2 adults and a baby costs 74.80 euros.

But in 1st class (business class), this one is only 3.20 euros more expensive, displayed at 78 euros… why deprive yourself: we will make this short 1h23 trip in the greatest comfort!

How to use Scotia Rewards Points

I pay for our train tickets with my Scotiabank Gold American Express card. This card allows me to apply my “Scotia Bonus Points” to any travel expense made with any travel company as you will see.

Wait for the expense to appear on your account and go to the ScotiaRewards website.

Below, you can see the purchase of these tickets (78 euros = 115 CA$), as well as the taxes paid on my plane tickets to Malta booked with my avios miles.

To apply points to these expenses, you will need to go to “Travel Points”.

You will then have access to your travel expenses for the last 30 days. You can go back as far as you like to find an expense that you would like to “erase” with your points.

Below, to clear my $115.06 train ticket expense, I will need to use 11,506 Scotia Bonus Points!

It’s as simple as that!

Here’s a video from Scotiabank that explains.

https://youtu.be/LUNNh7V7MEU

Bottom Line

You see it again: it’s easy to use points & miles to save money when preparing your trips! But you still need to know how to use it effectively!

In this case, my $115.06 expense was totally offset by 11,506 Scotia Bonus points. These points were earned through the card’s sign-up bonus (20,000 points), but also through the rapid accumulation of 4 points per dollar at grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants and movie theaters!

These train tickets cost me nothing!

The map used for this trip