Train Travel From Lyon, Fr. to Florence, It

9 1/2 hour journey. Consider flying.

Or, Tom, you could consider an over night stop along the way. In 2007 we wanted to take the train from Aix en Provence to Florence but didn't want to deal with the long ride or an overnight train that had a 2-1/2 hour layover in Pisa at 2:30am. Instead we stayed over in Monterosso, went on the via del Amore then caught the next train to Florence. Very nice break in the long train ride.

Useful tools for finding low-cost flights in Europe: www.whichbudget.com and www.skyscanner.com
You may not like what you find. There are very few non-stop flights between the two cities. Most of the combinations show long layovers. And the prices are no bargain, although it is impossible to be sure without knowing your travel date. Both Alitalia and Air France/HOP (which is a budget arm of AF) appear to have a few non-stops. The prices one-way are huge. However, these large airlines have the peculiar habit of selling round trips much more cheaply than one-way. Although officially frowned upon, a traveller can use the first leg and throw away the return. Another tactic might be to fly to Rome or another airport within easy reach of Florence, such as Bologna, but then you might prefer the train anyhow despite being a long ride.

One possible flight is to take www.vueling.com from Lyon to Florence via 1 stop in Barcelona. Overall trip takes 5hrs45min. Cost is 138Euro. Layover time is 45 minutes.

I agree with Darcy on this. We took a train from Salzburg to Florence a few years ago and wasted a whole day of vacation on the train -- actually the first half of the trip was fine and only the last few hours were wasted. Stretching the time out was an unexpected two-hour delay in Bologna; if we had planned better, we would have spent the afternoon and night there in Bologna and gone on to Florence the next day. From the rail map at a France site, it looks like you would have to change trains in Milan, near the midpoint of your journey. If I were making that trip, I would spend a night there and enjoy the city.