rail travel in italy

We are considering traveling to Italy. How many days in advance do you have to purchase tickets on the IC to get the reduced price. From what I have seen, a round trip ticket, for example, Rome to Florence is about $50 USD. That still is better then car rental. We have a lot of questions if anyone wants to send a personal message or respond here. Thanks

Check out italotreno.it They started service in Italy, in April of 2012. Some Italian billionaire purchased a fleet of French built high speed trains, and runs them over Italian State tracks.

We traveled from Rome to Naples non-stop - in one hour flat. The speedometer on display, showed us hitting speeds of 290 km/hr, or over 180 miles per hour. And the tickets, purchased and printed on line - in advance - only cost 20 euros each.

On the return trip, we took the regular Italian Rail FS train. It travelled at what seemed to be a good pace, made 4 stops, and took 2 and one-half hours. It also cost more.

I traveled the trains extensively while in Italy a couple years ago. Never really had any problems, and for the most part I found them reasonable. The one exception would have been my first ride on the rail system from Pisa to La Spezia.

I bought my ticket for a one way trip – the lady put a date stamp on it and life was good. When the conductor came around checking tickets I learned that I failed to validate the ticket in one of those nice little yellow boxes on the platform.

The conductor got a little gruff and explaining to me very loudly in Italian, which I did not speak a word, of the serious infraction I had committed. After flying for the previous 16 hours to get to this point in my trip, I was not as concerned as he was of my faux pas.

He left and returned with a book turned it to the English section and said “Read!” in a very loud voice. So I read out loud for everyone, which explained clearly what I had done wrong. The train car was laughing and by the end so was the conductor. When I finished in my best Spanish I told him, “I now understand”. He laughed even harder with my Spanish reply, albeit he wrote me a ticket for 5 Euros. Hey it could have been as much a 40 Euros, so I guess I was lucky.




My hint on travel – remember to validate your ticket. Safe travels!

Also check out this blog: 65 Days In Italy

Marissa and Keith did a wonderful job and now have a guide that you can download off Amazon.

The bullet trains sound interesting.

Most of our experience is with Trenitalia.

We found it pretty hard to buy anything in advance and to know exactly what stations were what on their websites.

Did a enough research with Rick Steve's books and others to know which stations in Venice, Rome, Naples, Livorno, Pisa
we probably wanted to go between. We then bought tickets at the time of travel. Trains are pretty good. Every once in awhile we were packed in from say city center to suburbs and then it thins out.

I was able to get some rough timetable info. Like we better be at station by 8am.

MY BIGGEST ADVICE IS BE PREPARED AT SOME STATIONS TO KNOW YOUR MC/VISA PIN #. I never use my cards for cash. This became a problem as many machines wouldn't process AMEX and MC/VISA processed but wanted a PIN. Be sure to have some Euros on hand. None of this is a problem at the big stations that have people and funny the machines took AMEX and Visa without PIN. Must be a crdit card fraud thing at the booneyville stations.

enjoy, we would definitely ride trenitalia again.

Validate your tickets - the dudes show up when you least expect it.

Pin must be 4 numbers right?
Cheers
irina

seemed to me that was what they were looking for. Of course, I didn't have/know a pin, so not sure.

Happy riding.

Yep in Europe it is a 4 digit number for PINs in ATM, but what what most folks are surprised by is the the smart chip credit cards. In the US we usually use a magnetic strip where Europe a chip is embedded. Here is a travel article on the topic.

Chips and Pins

Thanks for all the information. Since we intend to stay in Tuscany, we will travel by auto from Rome upon arrival. Is it less expensive to lease a car no located at the airport? We have found car lease costs can be 25% less if leased at a location not at the airport. Any suggestions?

You might consider taking the train to Tuscany. It's an adventure and was nice when we did it.
Then get a car up there.
Cheers
irina

Is the weekly rate for a car lease less in Tuscany then at the airport? We have found in some countries the rate has a high fee because of rental space for the car agencies at the airport and it is passed on to the customer.

I don't know, you will have to look that up. We did that in France also. Took train to Bordeaux and picked up rental at the train station.
Good luck
irina

Hi...just sent you a pm....