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Rail Pass or Train Tickets

Posted by on

Hello,
My Mom, my Aunt and I will be traveling to Italy next month for 2 1/2 weeks. We will be flying in and out of Rome while also visiting Venice, Florence and Sorrento. I’m having a hard time finding out how much a rail pass is to determine if we should go that route or purchase individual train tickets. Any help would be greatly appreciated 😊

Posted by
32398 posts

A Rail pass is rarely a cost effective option for travel in Italy, as tickets are relatively inexpensive. In addition, Rail passes do not include the compulsory reservation fees for the express trains, so you'd have to pay separately for those. Even with a Rail pass, if you're caught without valid reservations for the train you're riding on, you'll face hefty fines which will be collected on the spot! Finally, some rail networks in italy do not accept Rail passes, such as Italo and the Circumvesuviana.

If you're wiling to commit to specific express / high speed trains, you can save some money with discounted advance purchase tickets. For travel next month, there may not be many Super Economy or Economy tickets left, but you can check the websites. These are sold on a quota, and once the discounted tickets for a particular train are sold out, only full price (Base fare) tickets are available.

If you haven't travelled in Italy before, you'll also have to know the specific stations you'll be using as most cities have more than one. When using Regionale trains (which don't require reservations), buses or metro with locally purchased tickets, you must validate (time & date stamp) your tickets prior to boarding on the day of travel, or again hefty fines!

For your trip to Sorrento, you'll have to use either the Circumvesuviana or Campania Express from Napoli Centrale to Sorrento (I'd recommend the latter). Both of these trains depart from the Garibaldi station, which is downstairs from Napoli Centrale. You could also use a private driver for that segment, but that would of course be considerably more expensive.

You may find these websites helpful.....

Posted by
2487 posts

Advance buying of your train tickets can give you considerable discount: Florence to Venice, for example, can be as cheap as EUR 29,90 (even cheaper for over-60s) with one of the high-speed Frecce trains.
Assuming you have already booked your hotels, the fact that these are non-flexible, non-refundable tickets (only valid for that specific train on that specific day) won't be a problem.
Booking can be done with Trenitalia or their competitor Italo. I always use Trenitalia, which has an easy process: payment by credit card and an emailed pdf for printing at home. You can also use Trainline, which is a trustworthy ticket agent for these - and other - railway companies. (Trainline might work better with US credit cards.)
Use the Italian originals of the stations you need: Roma Termini, Firenze S.M.N. (or S.M.Novella or in full: Santa Maria Novella) and Venezia S.Lucia.

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