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A Reality Check

Posted by (Salt Lake City) on

For years my wife's job has restricted our travel Nov-Feb. She is retiring soon and we are ready to go. We will visit the Christmas Markets of Germany in early December with family.

As my wife has worked long overtime hours every January, she said that she would also like to take a trip to then. We visited Italy in the 1970's and 1980's while stationed in Germany and thought we might enjoy an off season visit now.

We are thinking 15-25 Jan:
Florence (fly into Florence)
Lucca
Siena
Assisi
Rome (night before flight out)

  1. Is there any significant extra cost to buying train tickets as we travel rather that advanced purchase? Is ItaliaRail.com the best place to plan rail connections?
  2. Are there any surprise detriments to late January travel? We know that the weather can be wet and cool.
  3. In recent years we have made our hotel reservations for Germany with Hotel Reservation Service and Booking.com. Do those sites work well for Italy?
  4. As we are only using Rome a final departure point, is the area around the train station fine for hotels?
  5. Any question that I am too inexperienced to ask?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Posted by
273 posts
  1. Based on your itinerary you only need to buy your train ticket to Rome in advance all the others legs are fixed price regional trains. Trenitalia.com is the best site to use
  2. As a someone who travels over there during Xmas and New Years the weather has never seemed cold or wet that time of year in Italy. You are looking highs in upper 40's to lower 50's fahrenheit.
  3. Booking.com is the way to go.
  4. Yes

5.

Posted by
3812 posts
  1. ItaliaRail is a re-seller. The company running the trains is www.trenitalia.com/en.html You must use italian city names, the same names you'll see on monitors and signs once in Italy
  2. The full schedules for your travel dates will be gradually uploaded by December 11. For now you can enter any day before December 11 to get an idea of the schedules and the fares
  3. It doesn't seem you are taking many high speed train, but mostly local trains with no reserved seats and no discounts for advance purchases. In short, you are taking trains that can't sell out.
  4. If you were taking any high speed train, you'd see on trenitalia.com both the walk-up and the discounted fares. The walk-up fare is called BASE, once published it doesn't change. You can't pay more. All the other fares (Economy, SuperEconomy etc) are the discounted and come with restrictions.
  5. Trenitalia does not sell discounted tickets on the day of travel. When you buy high speed trains tickets on the day, you always pay the BASE fare. Seats rarely sell out, discounted tickets always do.
Posted by
11990 posts

https://www.italotreno.it/en
https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html

These are the train company sites. Italiarail is an 'middleman'

There are suitable hotels near Rome Termini, Aberdeen Hotel among them.

Other than energy conservation measures putting a crimp on Christmas lighting, the only other comment is in the category of 'Capt. Obvious' about how many moves you seem to be making.

Posted by
1746 posts

IMHO January is a good time to visit Florence as there are few tourists and it is the only time of the year the city is quiet. If you are lucky you could get cold but sunny days and it could be quite agreeable. The only drawback I can see is that daylight time is short and, while rarely chilling, the weather is on the cold side, so indoor visits are better than outdoor. I would take out a destination or two and avoid having to walk or rush too much.

Posted by
1529 posts

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I have bookmarked the best sites for Italian Trains and will begin using them for planning.

I am glad to hear that Booking.com works well as I am accustomed to it.

I will likely trim my itinerary.

Thanks again, Gary

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