italy rail info

Just so you know, the train schedules are due to change on Dec.12th so any schedule on raileurope or bahn.de for after that is their guess at what the new schedules will be. You can check the fares and schedules for the trips you wish to take on the trenitalia website but you won't be able to book tickets with them. Their site doesn't take US credit cards. It's not a problem as you can easily buy your tickets once you get to Italy. If you are traveling after Dec. 12 just use an earlier date to get a good idea of the fare and schedule. They won't change much. There are lots of trains a day between popular cities and they rarely sell out. Donna

Trenitalia.com is the official website for the Italian train system. Raileurope is an agent; they don't show complete schedules and they mark up the fares. You can't buy tickets on the Trenitalia website with an American credit card, but it is fine to wait until you get there to buy them. If you are looking for schedules after December 12 on Trenitalia they may not be up yet. Just use a closer date the same day of the week. They won't change much, and you'll get the information you need for planning purposes. Prego.

As Sasha said, RailEurope is travel agency specializing in selling train tickets to North Americans. Trenitalia (Train Italy) is the site for the national railroad system for Italy. Sometimes bahn.de is better site for all European train schedules.

Trenitalia is the site that shows the prices you will pay for tickets in Italy, buying them either from a machine or at the window. RailEurope does mark the prices up, but not always significantly for Italy, from what I have seen. IF (and only if) you have a need for advance tickets for a particular journey, it is worth checking both there and on Trenitalia to see how much extra you will pay for the "privilege" of getting your ticket in advance. For example, last summer we (a family of 4) traveled into Italy from Switzerland. I bought tickets from Zürich to Milan on the SBB website. We needed to travel onward to Verona, with a transfer time of 20 minutes. I was afraid this would not be enough time to purchase the tickets at the (huge and busy) Milan sation, and then find our train. Plus I was worried that we would not get 4 seats together for our family on that train. So I checked RailEurope and the price for the Milan to Verona tickets was within a dollar or two of the Trenitalia price. I did have to pay the $18 handling fee (for all 4 tickets) but that was offset by a SIM card pre-loaded with $20 that they include for free (not sure if they still do this). Anyway, I ended up buying just that one journey from RailEurope, and wa glad I did, as we barely made our train to Verona, even with the tickets in hand. And our daughter got a lot of use out of that phone and card.

We just got back from Italy and did all our travel by train. Go to
<italiarail.com>. This site is dedicated to N. Americans wanting to travel on Italian trains. It was easy and they were great to work with AND accept all credit cards in the states. I know we didn't get any discounts, but I didn't want to bother wasting time figuring out how to buy tickets there in Italy at each station. I also felt more comfortable giving my credit card to an American company rather than someone over seas (though I know that is no good secure guarantee). We went 2nd class all the way and it was very good. I would recommend getting them ahead of time. Almost all the trains we were on were FULL so we're glad we had reservations. And if traveling with others, Italiarail put you together. We did carry 21" bags. If you're like me you accumulate extra weight in books, souvenirs, etc. You have to tote your own luggage onto, off trains and lift it above into the racks. For someone who hasn't done much of trains, it was easy, and highly recommend. We went from Venice>Florence; Florence>Naples; Naples to Pompeii (circumvesusiana---can't make reservations for that); Naples> Rome; mostlyon the high speed trains, they were great.