Are you planning on a Europe trip and wondering how you can traverse across the continent? You have the option of hiring a car and whizzing around the place. You can even take flights to get you from one place to another. Or you may prefer bus travel. But a great way is to Eurail across Europe. Buy a rail pass and explore Europe. Here is why Eurailing is a great idea:

In fact, today's Eurailpasses are the most popular passes for Americans and other non-Europeans visiting Europe. In 1999, more than 300,000 passes were purchased in the United States and Canada. More than 3 million tickets have been sold to date worldwide.

The increasing use of the Eurailpass — sometimes billed as a simplification of travel in an increasingly complex world — has coincided with the growth of higher speed direct rail service in Europe.

As rail travel and tourism in Europe has grown, so has the reliability of these kinds of trains, many of which are now also directly connected to airports and guarantee a high quality of comfort.

The most recent development is, of course, the use of high-speed trains. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden all have routes over which trains can run from 150 to 186 miles per hour.

The French TGV (train ` grande vitesse — high-speed train) is perhaps the most famous, with a regular, efficient, and practically accident-free network zooming people from Paris to major destinations throughout the country.

The Eurostar service that connects Paris to London in a little over three hours via the Chunnel (the tunnel under the English Channel) was a long-heralded addition to the high-speed network.