Planning an extended stay in April/May 2026 using Florence as our base. A little overwhelmed in planning our train travel as we will also be including a trip to Paris for 1 week during that time. Anyone have experience with the best way to have the most flexibility for train travel? Not sure if planning ahead and pre-purchasing passes or individual tickets is the best way or would prefer something more flexible.
And, which is the best app to use to purchase the tickets?
Grazie mille!
It appears to take over 9 hours to travel between Florence and Paris by train, so I'd strongly consider flying unless you want to make some stops along the way (Turin being one possibility). If you want to stick to trains, you'll probably save a lot of money by buying the Florence-Paris-Florence tickets way ahead of time, but that will lock you into a specific departure date and time. It would be more efficient to make Paris either your first or last stop and use a multi-city airline ticket (into Paris and out of Florence or vice versa). The Florence airport isn't large, so using the Pisa or Bologna airport should be considered.
Italian rail fares are generally reasonable, so an Italian rail pass is unlikely to be cost-effective. Some of your trips may be on regional trains rather than expresses. Regional fares are low and do not vary from day to day, and those trains (having no assigned seats) cannot sell out, so you can remain flexible on trips to some destinations. If traveling far and by express train, you might save enough by purchasing tickets well ahead of time to justify the reduction in flexibility. Even purchasing a few days ahead may produce worthwhile savings.
Trenitalia is the largest train operator in Italy. It has both express and (slower) regional trains. Italo is a second rail company, but it operates only express trains, going only to fairly large cities. Both have websites as well as apps. You will almost certainly be using Trenitalia some of the time. Being lazy, I stick with that company, but there's nothing at all wrong with checking Italo's offerings as well.
For Siena, an important side-trip possibility from Florence, the usual recommendation is to travel by bus rather than by train since the bus drops you off in the (upper) historic center, but the train does not.
Some of the popular small towns in Tuscany and the surrounding regions do not have train stations--or their stations are not within walking distance of the towns, so you'll most likely need to use buses to reach them. Buses will be inexpensive, but the probable need for some buses is another reason a rail pass would probably not pay off. The rail pass would not cover bus trips.
