My sister-in-law and I will be traveling to Venice, Lake Como area, Cinque Terre and Rome in October. We have all of our room reservations, but we were wondering if we need to make train reservations in advance or can we just purchase them when we are at the station?
Posted by
Centennial, CO, USA
1883 posts
Buy them the day you want to travel, or you can go the night before if the station is close to your hotel, or on the way.
Learn to use the automatic machines, but use CASH, not a CC. Unless you have a chipped card, I found they don't work. It's easy to feed your Euro bills into the machine.
And as always, if you aren't a regular reader of this board -- DO NOT let anyone who walks up "help" you at the machine, there is a good chance they are trying to scam you. Take your time and read the screen, it's very easy.
If you want to take the fast train, then do go on line and purchase those as soon as you can. But be warned, once purchased, you MUST take the train you reserve. If you miss it, or try to get on another one, you will be fined, and your ticket is no good, you loose the money you spend on the original ticket.
If this is your first trip to Italy, and feel insecure, then use the ticket counter to buy tickets, but plan lots of extra time to do that...the lines are generally long and can take up to 30 minutes...especially in Rome.
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23267 posts
The only reason and only advantage to purchasing tickets on line is to take advantage of the discounts that may be available. Very early purchase can get some deep discounts but those tickets come with lots of restrictions. You have three levels of fares - Super economy, economy, and base. The SE are very cheap but absolutely no exchange, etc. E can be exchange for difference in fare. And base is the standard price. All tickets come with a seat reservation and are specific to a train, day, and time. The exception is the Regionale train - more like bus on rails - no reservations. Just buy a ticket, get on and go.
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16893 posts
Buy your tickets through whichever method sounds easiest to you. Paying full fare for the whole route will only cost about $150 per person in standard class. If you wanted to buy a couple of the longer legs (Venice-Milan and La Spezia-Rome) online through Trenitalia, you could do so. Or you could buy all tickets at a travel agency or the train station in Venice; you will received some that are reserved and some regional trains (MIlan-Varenna-Milan and usually part of the Cinque Terre connection) that are not reserved (tickets need to be validated in the date stamp machine before boarding).