Rail travel in Italy

Point to point tickets are very easy in Italy. If you buy in advance, you can get mini fares as low as 9 or 19 euros on the direct IC train between Milano Centrale and Sestri Levante. It is another 6 euros or so to get to Varenna from Milan. I cannot find th eprice for the Varenna to tirano leg but it is a Regional train and can't be much. Without that part, you could be as low as 24 euros for the first two legs of your travel; even if you can't get the 9 euro fare it would only be 44 euros. Add the journey to Tirano and you will still be under 60 euros. A 3-day Saver Pass for travel in 2d class costs $192, by comparison.

My family and I got a Eurail One Country Pass for Italy. It is one pass with the names of the people who are with you on your trip. It's a voucher. Keep this with you when you get on the trains. They will come around and check this voucher and your pass.
We order the voucher thru Rick Steve. When we got to the train station we went to a machine to get a Global Pass for 4 people also. So every time we went to the station we had to get a global pass. There was a man in a booth in the middle of the Roma Train Station and he helped us out. By the time we took our second train trip we were pros.

Have you priced out point to point tickets on the trenitalia site? They are usually much cheaper than a rail pass. For the first leg: Milan to Levante- you can get tickets from 18 euros to 35.50 euros each. For Levante to Verenna - PTP tickets will cost 32.25 euros or less I couldn't find a solution for your last leg so you may need to take a bus. With your rail pass you'll need to add in the extra expense of seat reservation fees which are not included in the price. With trenitalia PTP tickets the price includes all fees. Donna

For those three rail trips you definitely do not want a rail pass. Tickets are much less expensive. You can buy them the day of the journey, although the first two may be discounted if you buy them in advance on Trenitalia. But then you lose flexibility. There is a direct train from Varenna to Tirano. It is the same train that brings you to Varenna from Milan; it continues on. Trenitalia ia quirky about showing it now, but you can see it if you use rail.ch or bahn.de. Pul up the trains from Milano Centrale to Tirano, and use the " show intermediate stops" function to see the stop in Varenna-Esino. Right now it departs there for Tirano at 7:24, 11:24, 13:24, etc. The journey takes an hour and a half.

By no means am I an expert as we've never been to Italy before, but I have been to Europe and we did a fair amount of train travel with a multi-country EurailPass. This trip, however, we are going to simply buy point-to-point tickets, because it will be so much cheaper. I feel comfortable enough with the train systems now, and a German friend of mine assured me that we would be fine doing that, so that's our plan. Price the tickets on the Trenitalia website (www.trenitalia.it) - you might be surprised at how affordable they are, especially compared to a rail pass! Happy travels!

Thanks everyone for your help, sounds like we are not going to have much trouble and buying point to point tickets is the best option for us.