Traveling from Milan to venice,Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome. What would be better taking IC trains or Eurostar trains? We don't want to get stuck with any train strike,
We will be traveling for 3 weeks.And will have 1 checked type of baggage each and a small carry on,
For a list of trains that are guaranteed to run during a strike, go here: http://tinyurl.com/2jfboq. Click on the appropriate link(s).
You cannot check luggage. You will be responsible for carrying ALL of your luggage on and off the train. Large bags go in the area at the end of the carriage. Small bags will fit in the rack above your seat.
Travel as light as you can. Getting luggage off and on trains was hectic. Also lugging them up and down steps train station steps to get to the next track you need can be tough too. Trains seem to run late and we missed our reserved connections and landed up doing local trains with lots of stops and changes to get where we needed to be. We had Eurostar reserved tickets but never made the connections on time. We also had an engine break down on one of our local trains. I guess that is all part of the fun of train travel in Italy.
Take the EuroStar trains for the cities you will be visiting. These trains are faster and make fewer stops. Strikes are announced in advance so you can easily avoid traveling on the days of the strike.
We just traveled in Italy by train. You will want to plan on trains being late and avoid tight connections from one train to another.
We made almost the exact same trip this past August. Eurostar was far better because we were able to cut out a lot of travel time and because there was air conditioning. We have taken IC trains in cooler weather, and it wasn't too bad. However, we would not take them to different cities due to the fact that you would lose a lot of time due to the travels and all the stops. It was also a lot easier to keep the luggage nearby on the Eurostar.
Be prepared for chaos, late trains, and cancelled trains. Our Eurostar from Venice to Rome just never showed up. There was no notice of cancellation or anything. We went to customer service and the lady said we were supposed to have taken some alternate route to Padova that just left. We never heard any announcement (that we could decipher). So we went to the ticket/reservation desk, and the guy there tried to sell us 2 new tickets on the next train to Rome for 100 euro, as if we missed the train and it was our fault. It was as if he had no idea how to put us on a different train, we had a perfectly valid ticket but for a train that was cancelled. We went back to customer service, and a different lady there said "no problem!", stamped our paper ticket and told us to get on the next train and ask the conductor to assign us a seat. Happily, we went on the next train, which was now double booked. No one seemed to care even though many people had to stand for a long time.
Either train is fine...honestly.
Also, I never had any problems or missed connections or strikes. :-)
