Train question - website

the site www.trenitalia.com is the official site of Trenitalia train system in Italy. The other site is the site for the train system in Germany. It does have the info for the Italian trains. Many folks seem to find the DB site easier to navigate. I haven't had any problems with the trenitalia site. Things to remeber, the schedule in Italy usually changes twice around June and October. if you search for a train on a date past the schedule change, you won't see many choices. For example, if you looked for a train now from Rome to Florence for departure in July, you will only see one train. there are in fact 4-5 trains per hour on that route. The work around is to search for a train on the same day of the week as your desired departure day but only a couple of weeks away from today's date. the schedules don't change very much, so you'll get a feel for the frequency and the times. The other factor that often causes some confusion is regional trains. Tickets for regional or "R" trains are usually only priced about a week or so in advance. So do the same thing search for the train in the next week to get a price.

There are so many different bus companies in Italy, it's a nightmare! The best way I've found to try to get info is to do a search for "autobus ." Sometimes I've had to e-mail the tourist office in a town and ask if there's a bus from there to wherever I'm wanting to go.

The www.bahn.de website is a wonderful resource but they are the official website for Germany. Theyget their Italian schedules from the Italians as well as other countries in Europe. It's a great overall website. However, for Italy, the Italian train website www.trenitalia.com is more accurate. True they change their schedules in June and December, which causes confusion until the new schedules are set but for Italy, it's www.trenitalia.com for me. The website is not difficult to navigate. Plus, for Italian tickets, you can buy online which you cannot on www.bahn.de.