Italy by rail

The replies you have received are all on target. To address your initial question, whether or not it is possible to "do Italy" by rail depends on which places you want to see. If it's larger cities like Florence, Venice and Rome, or the Cinque Terre (which has minimal roads), rail is the most sensible way. If it's some of the more popular hill towns like San Gimignano or Siena, bus works well. But if you really want to stay in "little villages," these often have no train station at all, and have minimal bus service (perhaps a few a day to a larger city in the morning, a few back to the small town in the evening, and no service on Sundays at all). So, if you want to see villages, you will need a car. But, if you are seeing major cities, they usually have frequent rail service. If you don't mind paying full price (the discounts are for advance purchase only), you can make decisions at the last minute. And yes, in small places, there may not be many places to stay, so arriving without a reservation (or a car to check out the next town's vacancies) is a bad idea.

Not sure what you mean by "hop on hop off". If it involves buying a railpass, you will still need reservations for fast trains, and railpasses in Italy are seldom cost-effective. There are two major classifications of trains, the fast trains (includes the Freccia trains and Intercity trains) and the regionale trains. Fast trains require a reservation. Regionale (slower) trains make more frequent stops but even these don't stop in every small town anymore. The Trenitalia.com site can help you with distances and pricing even if you don't buy tickets online, just put in a date within the week you are searching (for example, no later than November 18 if you search today) to get the regionale schedules. Trenitalia's schedules are d twice a year. Depending on time of year, finding a place to sleep in a small town (without reservations) can be risky. If you are traveling with internet access and don't want to be tied down to a schedule, you can do a hotel search on booking.com the day before you plan to leave one town for a room in the next place, if you know where the next place will be, but it sounds like you prefer to wing it; I used to do that, but now I usually have reservations. I recommend having a reservation at least for your first night so you don't have to do a hotel search while jetlagged.

We did Italy the summer of 2008 totally by rail. We bought tickets point to point. It is easy. Just remember to validate your tickets before getting on the train. Don't take any more luggage than you have to. I would not want to drive in Italy. Most small cities have rail service. We went to Parma, Bologna, Milan, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice,Pisa and Austria all by rail. You can't use a car in Venice anyway. Driving is OK, but you can also have some bad experiences. Thanks - Bill

Terry, first, you cannot do HO/HO under any circumstnances on any Intercity or high-speed trains. All high-speed trains require seat reservations. With the Regionale-class trains, it is possible to do a very limited HO/HO but it's not practical. Never overnight. In actual practice, it will be so much easier to buy point-to-point tickets. Smaller towns and villages are most often served by Regionale trains. They are the slowest trains in Italy. These are the "locals" that make every stop. No seat reservations possible. It's like your buses at home. You buy your ticket, get on and find your own seat. If no seats, you can stand. Note, however, that many small towns and villages in Italy don't have train stations. Often you can get to them by bus or taxi but the bus runs are not that frequent. I would suggest that you carefully explore which villages you wish to visit and then check out the transportation options.

You have to be adventuresome but it is doable. The regional trains would be your best bet since they hit most of the small towns. There is no reservations so the tickets never sell out. Get on any regional train headed in the right direction. Just get on and find a seat. No seat, you stand. Cheap way to travel since regional train tickets are very inexpensive. You should o good research ahead of time as to towns and areas you want to see because all small towns are not always interesting. Many small towns are just that - small, boring, towns. It could be a fun trip. Good Luck.

Beware that regional train validity has been greatly curtailed from 9 hours to, in most cases, 2.5 hours after validation (more for longer journeys). So you can't just purchase a ticket to a far-away destination and keep traveling the whole day on that ticket along the line. Finding a place to sleep on foot, on the fly is just too time-consuming in my opinion. If you are on a "tiny village", you might just find the handful of places there fully booked. The trip you envision is not feasible in term of a care-free experience. It would be a logistic nightmare, many nights spent on sub-par places etc. If you want to blow money away, at least do the reservations, online, the day before, than go to whatever place you want to.

terry, You've received lots of good information so far. The easiest way to do a "Hop On / Hop Off" rail trip would be with a Railpass and using only Regionale trains. However, that's not likely to be too cost effective, as basic tickets are cheap in Italy. The slower Regionale trains usually stop in smaller towns which have a station, but service may be sporadic in some cases (ie: not all trains will stop in a particular town). You can check the Trenitalia website to get a more detailed idea of the routes and times. It would be a good idea to research which towns you might like to stop in, as not all will have much in the way of accommodations or restaurants. In locations that don't get a lot of tourists, you may have trouble finding someone that speaks English. While the HO/HO method is possible, I suspect that approach will come with a few "bumps in the road". Happy travels!

Ken brings up an interesting point. If you look at the schedule charts, you need to notice if there are days that the train you want doesn't run at all (sometimes there's a bus alternative but not always). Some train stations now use buses (there's a symbol of a bus on the schedule) which leave from outside the terminal. I've only used a car in Italy when traveling with friends, otherwise I take trains, buses, boats, planes; once I had to hire a car because I missed every one of five connections I needed that day.

Thanks so much for all your VERY helpful information and advice...Much food for thought!!. I do appreciate all your replies....Cheers Terry