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Flying or taking a train from Italy to France

Posted by on

I will be in these areas in May. we will drive in Tuscany and have a car for 2 weeks while we are there. Then we will drop off the car and either go to Venice and the Cinque Terre before either taking a train or flying from either of these towns to Eastern France to pick up another rental car and drive for a week before dropping the car off in Paris.

My question is: would it be cheaper and less time consuming to take a plane or train from the Cinque Terre to say Lyons to pick up the car OR take a plane or train from Venice to Lyons, France to pick up a car. I am open to perhaps less expensive towns in eastern France to pick up a car. I only picked Lyons because it was a south of the Alsace region and seemed to be a bit bigger town (maybe less expensive for car rental pick up).

Thank you for your help,
Linda

Posted by
32219 posts

Linda,

One option you could consider is to travel by train from the Cinque Terre to Nice, and pick up a car there. It's about a six hour trip by train, and I don't think travel by air will be any quicker (when all is considered). Nice is worth spending a few days, as there's lots to see in that area.

Posted by
16894 posts

Similarly, if you fly to Lyon, I think it's worth visiting. You can check flight prices from either Pisa, Genoa, or Venice to Lyon, Marseille, or Nice (or Toulouse, Bordeaux, etc) at www.skyscanner.com. One trick you can try is to start with a wider search such as "Pisa to France," to get an idea of which French airports are cheapest or have the most service.

Posted by
78 posts

An alternative would be taking a train from Cinque Terre to Milan, then taking a french TGV (high speed train) from Milan to Paris.

It takes a whole day, but the scenery is worth it.

Please note there is no direct train between Cinque Terre and Nice, France. You have to change train at Ventimiglia (border station between Italy and France along the Riviera).

Posted by
11613 posts

I took the train from Ventimiglia to Nice, it was beautiful scenery but it took several hours. It would not be any faster to fly, counting flight time, airport security, baggage retrieval, transportation time to and from airports.

You should do a comparison search of car rental prices in different cities if that is a factor in choosing where you begin your travel in France.

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