Post tour travel--Lucca to Atlanta

I’d head to Florence the night before departure

You may also want to check flights out of Pisa

Thanks. Pisa has been running about 2x price than Florence flights, but also just noticed FLR flights have spiked a bit. Any insight on train schedule?

Train schedule won’t change much, if at all
You can safely assume what you see now on same day of week will be same or close to it next May

That would be cutting it too close for me. I sat on a train for 30-40 minutes when taking the train from Florence to Siena. You just never know with trains.

Your plan sounds fine, but I would leave Lucca on an earlier train - say 7:27; arrive Firenze 8:52 to build in extra cushion in case of delay. Otherwise you could compare going to Milan or Rome; more flight options there including non-stops to ATL, but that would mean building an extra day into your sched or leaving the night before.

An extra day might make more sense. The advantage of flying back from Milan or Rome is that you could hopefully find a nonstop at a reasonable price. Each city is approx 4 hours from Lucca by train. Or stay overnight in Florence.

We feel much more comfortable spending the night before a flight being fairly close to the airport. That's not to say things will go wrong, but one never knows. Particularly with train travel. The stress factor of planning a tight time line is not to be taken lightly.

Thanks all for the feedback. Milan, Venice and Rome are the only non-stops to ATL I could find. None are "reasonable" price wise and all incur an extra night's stay not to mention the long train ride. Also thinking an earlier train might be more comfortable. We have travel insurance to cover the missed connections, but why borrow trouble, ya know?

You might also look into the bus from Lucca directly to the Florence Airport. It may be more efficient timewise than the train.

I've flown out of both Pisa and Florence, and they are busy and unorganized airports. I suggest leaving yourself a lot of time to get through the various lines. Even with doing this, we still had problems as our flights were delayed by almost an hour and we then missed our connecting flights. This was in May, so not peak season.

It’s a ≈4min walk from SMN Station to the #2tram stop for the airport.

I’d add a night near SMN (recommend Soggiorno Rubino’s triple w view of Duomo) and do a relaxed evening in Florence