trains

DON'T use Rail Europe ... USE the Trenitalia website.

https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html

Avoid 3rd parties like Rail Europe.

Regarding time, most (all?) of Europe use the 24 hour clock for things like train schedules.

RailEurope is a third party re-seller of tickets and does not run trains. Therefore it doesn't necessarily show you complete schedules or all route options.

Its military time all day.

But yes, all European train schedules follow the convention we in the US call military time. 10:30 is indeed 10:30 am. 22:30 is 10:30 pm.

A hint when looking up Italian train schedules. Almost none of the regional trains are showing on the schedule after June 11. For reasons too complicated to go into now, they often don't show up until just before that date. So if you are researching an itinerary for after June 11, just look at the schedule for the same day of the week before June 11. They usually don't change much, if at all.

Italotreno is another rail company in Italy but only for "fast" trains from larger towns/cities. They don't run shorter regional routes. They have nice trains and competitive rates with Trenitalia's fast Frecce trains. Like Trenitalia's, their schedules are shown in what we call Military Time.

https://www.italotreno.it/en

These two companies were recommended in one of your previous posts this month:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/trains-1bd856ac-2a0c-4222-b080-8a091f620faf

Do not use Rail Europe for anything.

Use seat61.com for all rail questions across Europe and follow his advice.

All of Europe uses the 24 hr clock. Because I can change my watch, I trying running on a 24 hr clock the week or so before we leave home. I like it because you cannot make a mistake with time. We once showed up in the US for a noon flight to only to learn that our 12:15pm flight was actually a 12.15am flight. No wonder it was so cheap.

Maybe worth mention that dating can often be different as well? Where today is written as 4/27/2022 in the US, it can appear as 27/4/2022 in Europe. It was something I needed to remember when filling out start dates on certain museum passes, and multi-journey train passes, such as one I purchased for travel through Belgium.

Dates yes, be very careful!

yes, 24 hour clock all day. The morning may look like am/pm but it won't be.

Avoid RailEurope. Get the schedules from the national railway and chief train operating competitors but not from RailEurope or many other resellers. Go to the horse's mouth.

In Italy that is Trenitalia and Italotreno. There are similar named knockoffs, don't use them. If they give a price in anything other than Euro (€) avoid, unless you identified in the page or app (they both have excellent apps) to change to dollars, etc. avoid.

There are national railways. To save my typing fingers I won't list them all, but I don't know where else you are going and Europe is a big place. Tell us where else and we'll give that to you...

Dates are also an important thing to get right. In Europe they are either YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY.

Date pattern is critical. I have made more mistakes with the dates than I have with time. In European dates - start small, go big, day,month,year. Each is a bigger chunk of time.

I'm looking at train schedules too. Do you recommend booking tickets in advance from the US or wait until we are in Italy in mid May?

@Kim Do not book tickets for your day of arrival if by air, due to the fact that you cannot be sure your flight will arrive on time or how long it will take to clear immigration. Other tickets, yes, you can book now for train-specific nonrefundable discount tickets.

@Sam Thank you! I will look now. We fly into Venice and will spend 3 nights before I need tickets to Florence.

That will be perfect, Kim. Buying a couple of months ahead will get you big discounts, but those tickets will be for a particular train on a particular day, and only on that train, and non-refundable. So be sure before you press the buy button. Both ItaloTreno and Trenitalia's Freccia services join Florence (Firenze SMN) (named for the church next to the station, Santa Maria Novella) to Venice (Venezia Santa Lucia) (named for the church near the station, Saint Lucy).

Use whichever of the two competitors has a better fare at the time you want to go. They both about as fast and very reliable. Some people prefer one, some the other. I fall into the prefer Italo if I have a choice. I mean, how many trains do you know with an on board movie theatre?