I have to book multiple trains and was wondering the best website to use to book the high speed trains. I will be traveling from Milan to Venice to Florence to Rome to Sorrento (Naples) and then back to Milan over a two week period. Went on Trenitalia site and the first train out in the morning was 11:45. Could the morning trains be booked already?
Posted by
Paris
7325 posts
When are you travelling? It could be that bookings aren't open yet.
As for booking sites, people like www.loco2.com (trainline used to be good but changed recently).
Posted by
New Orleans
1225 posts
If your trip is a couple of months or more away, it's likely that all of the "solutions" on Trenitalia are not posted yet. Try putting in a date a week or so from now, same day of the week as your trip day will be, and take a look at what comes up. Even when they post the new schedules (sometime in June?) generally most of the schedules stay very similar to what is offered now. Then just keep checking back every few days until the new schedules are posted. You might also look at Italotreno.com. It's a different company, but uses the same rail lines as the Trenitalia trains and runs only high speed trains between specific larger cities. I prefer booking directly with trenitalia (or italotreno). There is no 3rd-party mark-up, I can choose my seats carefully, print my tickets from my home computer, and find the trenitalia.com website easy to navigate.
Posted by
Italy
3812 posts
I think You saw only trains departing at 11:45 because you did not select a departure hour from the drop-down menu on trenitalia.com. The site switched to the time on your system.
The above posts may be misleading, both trenitalia and Italotreno published the complete schedules of high speed trains months ago.
It's Trenitalia's Regionale trains running after June 8 that have not been uploaded in the system, yet. Even if you were using Regionale trains (and you are not going to), looking every few days for the schedules would be a waste of time. Regionale are the commuters trains that can't sell out and have no discounted tickets for advance purchases.
Do not trust re-sellers, use the official sites of the 2 competing companies running high speed trains trenitalia.com/en.html and italotreno.it/en
The Naples-Sorrento line is owned by a separate company whose tickets can't be bought online. They use the underground tracks below Napoli Centrale station.
Posted by
OP
51 posts
My trip starts September 24. So Italio site or Trenitalia? And what about first class or business class. How does that work?
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16895 posts
[edited] Both of those Italian railways usually offer booking from 4 months out, but also may already be offering tickets for Sept. 24. Each site describes the various seating arrangements pretty well. I would normally choose Standard/2nd class, but booking this far ahead can also make an upgrade very affordable, if you're ready to commit to dates and times. Their services are largely the same, but with Trenitalia usually offering more departures.