Pls advisebest train route from Nice to Florence. Or is flying better?

Don't use Rail Europe. Try captaintrain.com if you stick to the train plan. It will be a 7 hour train trip with probably two changes. I don't know of any non-stop flights so you are probably looking at 4 hours or so of travel time plus arriving prior to the flight at Nice Airport so all in it may turn out that you only save an hour by flying.

It is a 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 hour train trip. Look at www.bahn.com for options. One problem I see is that if you are looking for trains after June 12, the Italians have not yet loaded regional and IC trains into the computers yet.

If you look at www.trenitalia.com, they have options for the Thello train to Milan and change to a Freccia train to Florence. One connection at 8:08 am and one at 2:06 pm and both are just under 7 hours, and are bookable now for trains after June 12. In the 70 EUR range for nonrefundable tickets.

Raileurope is not the best place to look to buy train tickets.

Yes, www.capitainetrain.com is also a good place to buy.

I would definitely take the train - so much easier than flying and you go from city center to city center. The 8:08 train looks like a good choice - there are 2 at that time one has .5 hour connection in Milan the other a 1.5 hr connection.

By the way, capitainetrain.com has changed its name to captaintrain.com.

With no regular direct flights that I can see, this journey is best by train with one change in Milan.

Rail Europe sells train tickets based on the same fare range that anyone else offers. But their web cart can't always handle connecting trains (especially more than one connection) on the same itinerary. In this case, my test showed a link for "more info" which suggested breaking the request into to and from Milan, as others have suggested. Their ticket prices start from $45 for the Nice-Milan Thello train and from $24 from Milan to Florence. I expect those fares to be similar to the other sources. These are deep, advance-purchase discounts for the fast trains. If you were buying in the train station on short notice, without discounts, then you would probably find it cheaper to take the slow-train route with more connections.

I like to start with rome2rio.com because it lays out all my options (land, sea and air). Then I drill down.

thank you, everyone for the very useful comments! super helpful. have a great day!