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JJwritergirl
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Italy Train Question
in Travel
I am SO sorry for all the Italy questions, but I just don't want to mess anything up.
We need to take the train from Venice to Florence, and later, from Florence to Rome.
I am looking at different options and the prices are so confusing. The TrenItalia website advertises 9 dollar (Euro) fares, but when I run a search, they come up closer to 100. What are these trips actually going to cost? Any suggestions to make this a smooth process?
Re: Italy Train Question
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about purchasing tickets ahead of time. You can just buy tickets at the kiosks in the station on the day of. I can't remember now how much our tickets cost, but I want to say somewhere around EUR70.
I bought tickets ahead of time because I got an amazing fare (MINI? I can't remember the name of it) - it was worth it to us to not have the flexibility.
I recall the confusing part being getting the times correct when I was searching in the system. I'm not sure how much that helps you - but I did buy ahead of time.
We bought our tickets for our June/July trip last weekend. Trip from Venice to Florence was 38 euro, Florence to Naples 78 euro, Naples to Rome was 38 euro.
Didn't love their website. I got quite a few error messages before my purchases went through. Glad I booked ahead of time though - we reserved our seats and got the itineraries we wanted.
I think the prices just depend on the speed of the train, the faster trains obviously being more expensive. I didn't look into those 9 euro fares, but I can't imagine they'd be for 2+ hour fast trains, so I didn't even bother wondering about it. I expected the fares to be right around what we spent.
There are different lines, the "slow train" (makes lots of stops) is the Inter-city (IC) and the "fast train" (usually direct for the routes your talking), Eurostar (ES), which is obviously quicker but costs, approximately, double the price of IC.
IC is fine, but I usually prefer to go ES b/c it's quicker and I'd rather pay more and have more time at my final destination. I would expect the Rome to Venice fare to be about 80euro; Florence to Rome should be cheaper-- it's been awhile since I've done it, but I'd say somewhere around 35/40euro.
One option for Venice that you may want to consider is catching a cheap flight. It'll save you time and, sometimes, $. I'm going up in June and the trainfare from Naples was 120euro and easy jet tix were 60euro. That's Naples, not Rome, but still, might be worth looking into.
WRT to buy upfront or at the station-- depends on a) when you're coming and b) how tight your schedule is. It's very easy to buy tix at the train station-- automated machines with an English option (if you don't speak IT). The only potential issue is that the popular routes and popular times get pretty crowded in peak tourist season (July). I've had friends stuck standing on IC Rome to Naples (3hrs) b/c all the 1hr ES trains were sold out for the day. Not the end of the world, but not super fun. I personally buy in advance in the summer, so that I know I'm seated and on the train I want at the time I want.
GL!
I have nothing useful to add, but a story for when i took the train from Rome to Venice.
About 1/2 way through our ride, the train abruptly stopped. After a few minutes they started doing some announcements via intercom. It said we were momentarily stopped but should start again in a few minutes.
An hour later we were instructed on how to get off the train, but it didnt say why.
We were stranded in the Italian countryside for several hours - turns out the train had hit either someone or something (never did find that out) and had to be cleaned up/repaired.
Me made friends as we all tried to figure out what was going on!
Are the fares you're finding for different classes of seating?
EUR 9 sounds too low, but EUR 100 sounds on the high side. I feel like a lot of ours were maybe in the EUR 40-70 zone?
We didn't book any in advance, we just bought them at the stations. We'd usually buy our ticket to depart a city when we arrived to (mostly) avoid selling out of the times we wanted. (That might not work so well during busier seasons than October.) We bought some at kiosks with cash, but more often we went to the counter so we could pay with a US credit card, which didn't work in the kiosks.