Best Varenna to Castlerotto transport choices?

Trenitalia shows Varenna-Esino to Milano Centrale to Verona Puerto Nuova to Bolzano taking about 4 1/2 to greater than 7 hours depending on which train you catch, at prices between 29 and 43 euros per person. There are 10 trips shown on Monday September 2, just a random day I chose. All trips have 2 changes.

You can book the entire journey on the Trenitalia site so you just show up and change trains.

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

The bus stop in Bolzano is directly outside the train station so that part is easy.

So if I book the full trip then I get 3 tickets and just have to make sure that the time margins allow us to get off one train, validate the tickets for the next, and board the next?

We had a rental car for our trip from the Piemonte to the Dolomites, so much easier.

If you buy an advance ticket you print at home, you should get a single ticket listing Bolzano as the destination, The portion from Varenna to Milano Centrale is pre-validated, the portion from Milano Centrale will be with a seat assignment on a specific carriage if it is a Freccia train, then (probably) an assigned seat on an EC or Freccia train to Bolzano. Trenitalia will show you the connection times. So there is nothing to validate.

That makes it sound much simpler. Thanks Sam.

Les,

The method for tickets suggested by Sam should work well. If you want to buy online, have a look at Trainline.com. Once you're registered on the site, purchases are very easy and they also have a smartphone app.

When you arrive in Bolzano, as I recall you'll need to walk a couple of blocks to the bus depot. You can buy your bus ticket there, although these are probably available online also (I didn't check). The ride is about 50 minutes.

Hope you enjoy your time there. It's a beautiful place!

Ken, thanks for the tips. The Trainline site looks like a good one to make planning easy.

Les,

One caveat to mention.....

Trainline has started adding a small surcharge to some ticket purchases. I don't find a few extra bucks to be a problem in the overall expense of a European holiday and they have such a convenient website so easy to use. They also sell tickets for rail networks in many countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Spain and some others so it provides "one stop shopping".

These are the details on the surcharges....

"Trainline operates a tiered booking fee system, where booking fees change depending on the method of booking, value of transaction and payment method. Customers are charged anywhere between £0.25 and £1.50, unless purchasing a ticket on the day of travel via the Trainline app when there typically is no fee. It is possible to buy the same tickets from the websites of the train operating companies. These websites do not usually charge booking fees."

While in Castelrotto, you may enjoy riding the chairlift up to Marinzen. Be careful the goofy goats don't steal your lunch - http://www.marinzen.com/en/ .

Have a wonderful trip!

Just thought of a few more questions regarding this:

1) How far in advance should I book the trains?

2) What if our the train is delayed and we miss one of the connections? Hopefully this is unlikely.

Thanks for all the answers so far.