Bus Routes - Manciano, Grosetto, Italy - Please HELP

Can you or your spouse drive a car? For the type of trip you are planning renting a car is really a must. Buses in rural areas are not very frequent and virtually non existing on Sundays and holidays. Taxis are not widely available either in those small villages and the cost would be exorbitant anyhow.

If you don't plan to rent a car, then you should stay in a larger city. If you won a trip to stay in Manciano, there is also the possibility that your stay might be in a country home out in the middle of the countryside, which would make it impractical, if not impossible to function without a car.

Bus timetables are at the bottom, but I'd recommend to rent a car at FCO. Use a consolidator such as www.autoeurope.com or www.kemwel.com (both part of the same company). An economy car (which is more than sufficient for 2 people) will cost you less than $200 a week, full insurance included. You will not regret it.

http://mancianopromozione.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/LibrettoInvernale2015_Aggiornato.pdf

Roberto,
Thank you so much for replying. A car would be ideal, but we don't feel comfortable. The majority of day trips are roughly 20-40 minutes away. The bus info was incredibly helpful. Thanks!

The bus website is www.tiemmespa.it. Are you familiar with it? Have you used it? I can find all of the Manciano bus rides from your schedule on the site. But I can't figure out how to navigate the site to purchase bus tickets?

Basically we want to visit Saturnia (20mins away), Pitialiagno 20 mins and Montemeramo (10 mins). I have these bus route numbers. Are you familiar with any bus online tickets?

Very kind of your time and expertise.

Thanks,
Kyle

I haven't been to that part of Italy, but you normally don't need to buy short-haul Italian bus tickets in advance. You do need to know where to buy them. If Manciano is quite small, it may not have a bus station as such. In that case, the nearest Tabak or newsstand might sell the tickets. Occasionally there is truly no place to buy a ticket, in which case you pay the bus driver. Your hosts (or the rental agent) in Manciano should be able to tell you where to get bus tickets.

The bus schedule is usually posted near the place where you buy the tickets. But again, the codes on the schedule are important! They reveal which routes run only on workdays (feriale), etc. And I've seen stale schedules still posted, so always look for the date range shown on any schedule you find.

Aaron thank you!! Excellent insight!

I bought a train pass from raileurope.com from Rome to Ortebello.

Can anyone help me with getting from the train station Ortebello - Monte Argentario to Manciano? What is the yellow bus #?

OR at the train station, could I take a taxi for faster service?

OR at train station, do they have Uber drivers?

OR at train station, do they have private drivers working for a company?

Thank you!!!!

I don't see why you shouldn't feel comfortable driving there. You are not from Australia or some other country where they drive on the left side of the road? In Italy they drive on the right like in North America. Those areas are rural with very limited traffic, it's not like driving in Manhattan. There is nothing to be afraid of.

I've traveled to those locations several times, but always driving my own car, so I don't know the exact buses there. But they all work the same in any area of Italy. They are easy to use and you buy tickets on board or at the tobacconist's shops (Tabacchi) displaying a Tabacchi sign. You don't buy those tickets online. Half of the older country folks who use them there wouldn't even know what the internet is. However buses are infrequent outside of commute hours. Bus service is really designed for local workers and students, not really for tourists, therefore they are infrequent in the middle of the day or non existent in the evenings after commute hours or on Sundays. If you want to visit those areas, throw aside your fears and rent a car. There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

I bought a train pass from raileurope.com from Rome to Ortebello.
Why did you buy a train pass? Tickets from Rome to Orbetello cost just 10 euro ($11). You buy those at the station. How much did you pay for that train pass?

Can anyone help me with getting from the train station Ortebello - Monte Argentario to Manciano? What is the yellow bus #?
No idea what the yellow bus is. The train station closest to Manciano is Albinia. From there you'd take bus no. 41/P. The timetable for 41/P is on page 116 of the link I provided above. As you can see there are very few runs and only on weekdays (Feriale). The buses that pass through Manciano are listed in the section called "indice delle localita'" (index of localities). The buses are:
PIT5-A, PIT5-R, 11/P-A, 11/P-R, 16/P-R, 17/P-R, 17/P-A, 41/P-R, 41/P-A, 8/G-R.
The A and R indicate the direction of travel. The A after the number indicates "Andata" (going). The R after the number indicates "Ritorno" (return, coming back), i.e. the opposite direction.

OR at the train station, could I take a taxi for faster service?
I doubt there will be any taxi in any of those small stations. Maybe if there is a Tobacconist shop they might call one for you. However taxi service is not at all available in those rural areas, the taxi will have to come from a bigger town (maybe from Grosseto), therefore at a great expense. Only a busy station, such as Grosseto, will have taxis waiting outside.

OR at train station, do they have Uber drivers?
No Uber, sorry. The only Uber service available in Italy is Uber Black, which is available only in major cities (like Rome, Milan, Florence, etc.). Uber Black is a black limo service, which is substantially more expensive than taxis. The regular Uber is not permitted in Italy (thank the Italian Taxi lobby for that).

OR at train station, do they have private drivers working for a company?
Nope. Private drivers can only be booked in advance. They are not allowed standing at the stations (and they wouldn't be in those small stations anyway). Only licensed taxis can (but probably they wouldn't be at small stations). Orbetello is a bit bigger than Albinia, but I don't know if taxis would be outside even in Orbetello. I doubt it.

How did you pick these small towns? Was it part of the trip you won, the lodging they arranged? Someone with a straight face wants to have you pay $2700 for the driver? Were they connected with the group giving away the trip, by chance?

In any event, if you are too uncomfortable about driving in Italy then I'll be frank and say that you have two choices here: pay the ridiculous charge for a driver or pass the trip to someone else.

Bus service in rural Italy is not for the faint-of-heart. If driving is too risky for you then you're never going to survive getting around by bus. The buses are aimed at the locals and run hours to serve the needs of the locals going to work or school. There are many days the buses will not run a standard schedule due to holidays, day of the week, or just random service interruptions. And all the info about this is going to be in Italian. Don't count on small towns having a staffed bus station, which isn't really that much of a problem for you since if you don't speak Italian you won't be able to talk to the staff or bus drivers anyway.

Hi Kyle, I also am wondering why these towns? How much are you paying for this "free trip"? If you won plane tickets, take a train to a larger town for your vacation...it will be so much easier for you. We went to Grosseto as one stop on our 3rd trip to Italy and did take the bus from Siena and the train on to Rome.

But we took a train on a Sunday out to the beach, the the train back wasn't running until a later time. We could laugh it off as Italy, but it wouldn't be so funny on your first trip.

Hi Roberto,

Your information was very helpful. I bought our train passes on raileurope.com, however it doesn't have an option for Albinia. The option was Orbetello Monte. My local AAA agent stated that this was the Albinia area. Per your bus schedule, it looks like a train goes from Orbetello to Albinia to Manciano (#10/OR). If I could just confirm that a train will indeed take us from Orbetello to Manciano, than I feel like we will be ok. Do you agree that this train will get us to Manciano?

To All,
Also, at the Orbetello train station, do they have a rental car service? Instead of renting in Rome (since i have my train tickets), I could rent a car in Orbetello?

We chose these towns from recommendations from several people who have visited this area, and as all of these small towns are within 10-40 minutes away. We do have day trips scheduled with a driver to Florence and Rome.

Thanks to the group, this has been very helpful in our planning.

Kyle

I stayed in Montemerano
We did walk from Montemerano to Saturnia (6-7 km each way). There are not so many buses going there but some do make part of the trip.
Buy a detailed map of the area.
Connections between Manciano and Albinia (orbetello) is not too difficult but be sure to get off at the right stop ( ask bus driver).
There are also bus connections to grosseto.
Pittigliano is really worthwhile And good bus connections from Manciano.
You Have to buy your bus ticket at the tabaccaio.

kyle, sounds like we do have the same trip. I am afraid my husband and I are thinking about hiring the driver in Manciano. Just not every day and see if we can negotiate the price. I will be very interested when you return as to what you advise. We do not go till September. so thankful for this website. My husband ordered the Rick Steves book on Italy. We just got it yesterday. I have been reading it.