Help! Need advice from those who have traveled the national trains in Italy.

While high speed trains are shown for months in advance, regional trains are only shown for the next week. So, look at the Saturday, May 24 to see many more options.

I did look for next week and it does still show just the one train. :(

Are you looking at www.trenitalia.com for your train schedules??? Hopefully you're not looking at RailEurope.

A quick search for upcoming Tuesday on trenitalia shows me 7 trains departing Firenze SMN to Perugia beginning at 15:09, even more if you search earlier departures.

poole,

As Tim mentioned, there are numerous trains daily between Florence and Perugia. Which website are you using to research trains? The schedules for the latter part of the year won't be uploaded to the Trenitalia website until about 15 June, so there's no point in trying to check schedules for 19 July. If you look at a date in the next week on the same day-of-the-week that you'll be travelling, that will provide a good estimate.

Depending on which train you connect with, the route from Florence to Perugia may be direct or it may have one or two changes in Terontola-Cortona or perhaps Firenze Campo di Marte. Travel time is about 2 - 2.5 hours, and current fares are as low as €13.55 PP. As some of the trains on that route will be Regionale, DON'T forget to validate your tickets prior to boarding the train on the day of travel, or you'll face hefty fines which will be collected on the spot! The same fines apply to those riding the premium trains without valid reservations.

You didn't say whether you were planning to pre-purchase tickets for the trains you'll be using. While you can save money with early purchase of tickets for the premium trains, there are no price breaks for Regionale trains so the easiest method is simply to purchase those when you arrive in Italy, either from a Kiosk or a staffed ticket office. You could also use one of the travel agents in Venice (listed in the Guidebook) or buy them on the day of departure from Venice.

Be sure to change the departure time in the little window before you hit Enter. It defaults to local time in Italy, so if you're on the West Coast of the US and run a search on trenitalia.com at 1 pm, it will show you only trains leaving at 9 pm or later unless you change the departure time before running the search.

Thank you for your comments, but it still only shows 1 train for Florence to Perugia on July 19. I wonder if there is any other way to find out if this is the only train that day?
I too have seen all the times for this route on weekdays, but we do need to travel on the 19th of July which is a Saturday.
Yes, I have been looking at the Trenitalia website only.
I wonder if on weekends not as many trains run this route?

As Ken mentions above, the schedule for July 19 isn't available yet. So by checking May 24 (also a Saturday) you can at least see what times are likely for July, too. There will be LOTS of trains available for July 19, but the regional schedule just won't be loaded for a while.

Trenitalia sells the tickets, but DB can be an easier way to view and print schedules. How to Look Up Train Schedules Online gives you the DB train schedule link and tips for using it. Note that regional Italian train schedules are not yet published past June 14.