Trains in Italy

To buy tickets you have to use Trenitalia; the German train site doesn't sell them. Two things about using Trenitalia: 1.. Make sure you put in the hour for departure. Otherwise, it will default to local time, which may be in the middle of the night when no trains are running. 2. Prices for Regional and Regionale Veloc trains will only show up about a week in advance. Your trip to Cinque Terre will include one or more legs on a Regional train, and about half the trains between Orvieto and Rome are Regionale Veloc. So you won't be able to buy these tickets until the last week. If you want to get the best price on the ES train from Venice to Florence, you can buy that in advance. And you can choose an IC train from Orvieto to Rome and buy that. The rest will have to wait. (You can cover part of the journey from florence to cinquese Terre by ES or IC train from Pisa to La Spezia, but the ES train in particular will increase your overall cost and may offset any savings from advance purchase.)

Thank you all. I am searching for early to mid May. Is it too far in advance to be searching? Right now on a monday in early May Trenitalia doesnt show a single train from Venice to Florence - that just doesnt seem right. Any thoughts?

We often recommend bahn.de as a good planning site. However, you can only buy tickets at bahn if the train starts or ends in Germany. To purchase Italy tickets you need to use trenitalia.com. And most of the schedules are not post until about 60 days out. Just use the same day of the week next week to find the schedules. The time schedules change very little from quarter to quarter. Regional trains do not have reservation and therefore never sell or offered at discount so there is no point in buying regional train ahead of time.

Elizabeth, All of the routes you're travelling have numerous departures, so you won't have any trouble getting around. For example: > Venice to Florence - there are departures about every hour, so just decide what time you want to leave. My preference would be to depart Venice ~11:00, as that will allow you to have a nice breakfast at the Hotel, and then trundle to Venezia S.L. via Vapporeto with your baggage. > Florence to Cinque Terre - also numerous trains each day, usually Regionale with at least one change. From Florence you'll likely be accessing the C.T. via La Spezia (where you'll change to the local train). With Regionale trains, DON'T forget to validate your ticket or you could get a nasty surprise! > Orvieto to Rome - numerous trains every day and only about a one hour trip. I'd suggest looking at the Trenitalia website and searching for a date next week, using the day of the week that you'll be travelling. That will give you an idea of the times. Even if the schedules for May haven't been posted yet, I doubt they'll change too much. I wouldn't be too concerned about buying the tickets online, as they're so easy to buy in Italy. If you purchase a few days before you'll be travelling, you may be able to qualify for the discounted "Mini" fares on the fast trains. You may find it helpful to have a look at This Website for lots of information on rail travel in Italy. Happy travels!

Depending on how far in advance you're looking, there may be nothing yet. Apparently they only post the schedules about 2 months or so in advance, however I don't think they change very often. If you want to check the schedule or price, just enter a date in the next couple of weeks that corresponds to the same day of the week you'll be traveling and it will pop up with all of the routes. I like the www.trenitalia.com site the best. Switch to English by clicking the British flag at the top.

and Cinque Terra is a region (5 lands) not a station name. You will need to use the name of the station you want...

Trenitalia only posts their schedules for 60 days ahead. Needless to say, government subsidized services are up in the air right now in the southern European countries. Expect less train service in the future might be a fair statement. Venice to Florence would be a point to point ticket, and you would also usually need a reservation for a fast train. 158 miles and 2 hrs. approx. Florence to Cinque Terre1 hr. west to Pisa, change trains for La Spezia (2 hrs.?) and switch to a local train going up the coast.
I'm forgoing C/T this year, as two of the towns are torn up from floods. The place is still a messto be seen next trip. Orvieto to Rome is a 1 hr. 15 minute trip. They have local service about every 1 1/2 hrs. in the a.m. with no reservation required.

Trenitalia has some schedule posting challenges as of late. Usually schedules are posted for "six month" periods - from June to December and then from December to June... Usually around the 12th of each June and December, new routes, route changes, and often prices increases are added into the system. This year, due to some quirks, the system had only been loaded through May 6... but fortunately that changed last week and now they are up through June. According to their website, you can buy tickets up to 120 days in advance. Personally, my earliest pre-purchase has been about 92 days. Again, if you're trying to pre-purchase for a July ticket in May, the bi-annual schedules may not be posted yet. So your pre-purchase options, impacted by the schedule changes, might only be 30 days if you're on the cusp of one of these "change" periods. Confused yet - welcome to Trenitalia! A new privatized line, Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV), is starting service this year (finally). This has been "in-the-works" since 2008 (Progress moves slowly in Italy) and it will be interesting to see how Trenitalia responds. Will they drop prices or increase the MINI allotments to force the hand of the NTV group? Certainly NTV will have newer trains and probably "better" customer service. (That's not much of a stretch). They appear to be positioning themselves to go after the "visitor" and higher-end market. And what impact will it have on middlemen like Rail Europe, rail passes, or even Regionale train service in Italy? The slower Regionale trains will get even less money for repairs and upgrades due to the competition at the upper end of the market...

It's an interesting time with all the economic chaos and the "new" government touting enhanced competition opportunities. Certainly taxi drivers have responded negatively to the new government positions - note all the wildcat taxi strikes in Rome.
NTV could not be in a better position for a shot at a market grab. But reduced traffic on the state-run Trenitalia could have adverse economic ramifications for the new government. What a CATCH-22. Ah, what would Italia be without paradoxes!