Prebook Train Travel?

Larry & Renee,

I'd suggest buying advance train tickets if you'll be travelling on express / high speed trains (ie Florence to Venice). That way you'll be able to take advantage of the discounted Economy or Super Economy tickets. Note that those tickets are specific to train, date and departure time and come with compulsory seat reservations, so you must use the train that you've booked.

The trip from Venice to Lecco will require one or more changes, depending on which solution you choose. Some of the routes have one change at Milano Centrale, with a Freccia train for the first segment and a Regionale for the second. That's probably the solution I'd use.

For trips on Regionale trains, I don't usually bother since it's so easy to buy from the self serve kiosks in the station (don't forget to validate before boarding the train).

I just did a search using an arbitrary date in October since you didn't specify your travel dates. Check the Trenitalia website for all the details.

What I suggest you do is just look up trains on www.trenitalia.com and look at the fares that are offered. If the only fare type offered is "ordinaria" then you are looking at a regional train with fixed fares. These you can safely buy just before you board.

But if you see "Base" and "Economy" and "Super Economy" you are looking at trains where you can save money buying in advance. Also those trains typically have compulsory reservations, which means that if you wait till the last moment some trains might be booked out forcing you to travel maybe at a time that is not your first choice.

But generally speaking Trenitalia runs enough trains that you should not need to worry about not being able to travel because all trains are sold out (like happens all to often in eg. Spain). The main reason to book long distance trains in advance is for the discounts.

Sure, I'd prebook. And I will, for our April 2025 trip that will have 3 legs--Florence/Rome, Rome/Salerno, Salerno/Taormina, Sicily. 4 months out I believe is the earliest, so I'll be booking around December 15. For the discounted reasons above, and I think we're going to opt for 1st class because just looking, it's only a few Euro more per ticket than 2nd. If you go to the 'Man In Seat 61' website, they delineate the class differences, the little extra luxuries. So why not?

Yes, they'll be non-refundable but we kind of know our schedule, Late morning/early afternoon travel, so we can have a leisurely last morning in our destination. And worse comes to worse and we can't make a given train, we haven't lost that much money, thus to me it's worth the risk.

In Salerno, I've already eyeballed the salumeria that we'll get panini's, chips & water for our train journey to Sicily. It's a great adventure, the very best way to travel in Italy.

The only reason to pre-purchase train ticket is to take advantage of any discount that might be available. But the discount tickets come with restrictions -- basically no change, no refund. If you are comfortable locking yourself into a fixed schedule, the discount tickets will save a few Euro. The probably of any single train selling out is extremely low (exception would be holidays at prime time). Second class is more than fine but it you can get a deal on first class go for it.