Travel From Rome to Siena

Buy your bus tickets at the station or take the train. You can go to the bus terminal the first day you get to Rome and book the tickets you want or you can look into train schedules and book a train online before leaving home.

Donna

Donna is right, it's easy to buy bus tickets when you arrive. Face-to-face translations are always easier than phone conversations. If you have to, just write the city names on a piece of paper and hand that to the agent. Worked for me in Poland.

Train involves one change, as I recall, not difficult.

Thanks for the info...really appreciate it. Since we arrive on May 1 and have to travel on May 2 (plus the fact that I'm way too anal to rely on showing up the day of our travel and hoping all turns out well!) I think I'll buy train tickets online.

kg,

I'd suggest taking the train on that route as it's very easy and will be faster than the Bus. Travel time will be about 3 hours, and there's usually at least one change of trains. Where the change occurs will depend on which train you choose. When you arrive in Siena, grab a Taxi for the short ride up to town. You can see all the rail solutions on the Trenitalia website.

If you wish to buy tickets in advance, you can buy either from the Trenitalia website, or at www.captaintrain.com (prices are the same as the rail operator). You may find it helpful to watch THIS short video.

A few points to note. If you buy tickets well in advance and manage to get Super Economy tickets, these are non-refundable and non-changeable after purchase, so choose carefully. One segment of your trip may be via Regionale trains, and there are no price breaks for buying those in advance. If you buy them locally, you MUST remember to validate them prior to boarding the train on the day of travel, or risk hefty fines.

Thanks for the information....but I'm not sure it's possible for me to get much more frustrated with this process! The Trenitalia website flat-out doesn't work....won't let you buy tickets without being logged in and won't let you login unless you're from Italy! The Captain train website isn't much better...fails at every train I select. I have to say that my experience with trying to book transportation, accommodation and tickets in Italy so far is not filling me with confidence for this trip! Hope I'm wrong, but nothing seems to work and nobody in that country seems very helpful.

K.G.,

The Trenitalia web site DOES work but it requires a bit of patience and pre-planning. I have successfully purchased Trenitalia and Italo tickets from the USA on multiple occasions.

1) Make sure you are working from a computer connected to a printer so you can print EVERYTHING during the purchase process. The Trenitalia site is notorious for not wanting to email receipts/vouchers/tickets to email addresses outside Italy. (I didn't have any problems but reading hear and other forums, many people do. Also, check your "junk mail" folder in case you email system sent it there...)

2) Know the Italian names for the train stations you are traveling between. The English version of the web site uses the Italian names - not the Anglicized.

In my travels of Italy, I have never encountered sold-out trains. The only time I've come close to a sold-out regionale train, it was between Padua and Venice and college students were traveling back and forth... The only time advance tickets are really necessary, other than the price savings, is when you have a large group of people who want to be seated together. If you wait until the day-of, there's the chance travel parties will be split up and their seats will be in different carriages. So, you can probably safely purchase your tickets the day you arrive or the day of travel.

One last thing to remember. If you ticket does not contain a train number, carriage number and seat number, it is for a regional train and the ticket(s) MUST be validated in a time-clock looking device. These validating machines are usually located in the station at the entrance to the platform hall and at the head on the each platform. In the event the validating machine doesn't work, find a conductor and have them HAND VALIDATE before getting on the train. It's a substantial fine for not validating your ticket as it's considered transportation fraud.

Good luck and above all else, stay calm and have fun.

that most routes are not available to me unless I have something called an ItalyPass.

Try the mobile version of the site: https://web.busbookingline.it/index.html#/home
It's a little easier to use, this way you'll see that neither ItalyPass nor European credit cards are mandatory. Hundreds from US buy Sena tickets online.
If you don't know where to stay in Rome and Siena, choose ROMA - AUTOSTAZIONE TIBURTINA and SIENA PIAZZA GRAMSCI. The first is in front of a railway and metro station called Tiburtina in Rome, the second is on the top of the hill, where 90% of tourists usually stay in Siena.

won't let you buy tickets without being logged in and won't let you login unless you're from Italy!

Look at this screenshot: http://s14.postimg.org/v7tghn5kh/Immagine.jpg Not registered customers must select the radio button circled in green.
I think that if you can't use neither the French site (capt. train), nor the Italian one (Trenitalia) you should try a US based authorized re-seller like www.italiarail.com .

If you ticket does not contain a train number, carriage number and seat number, it is for a regional train and the ticket(s) MUST be validated in a time-clock looking device

This isn't entirely accurate, but let's keep it simple: no ticket purchased on line must be validated, even those for regional trains.

kg,

The Trenitalia website has a bit of a reputation as not being the most "user friendly", however I'm really surprised to hear that you had troubles with the Captain Train website. It's one of the easiest and most user friendly of all, and I'd recommend using that over the Trenitalia site.

Which trains were you trying to book? With that information I might be able to offer some further tips.

The process of booking trains, hotels and other things in Italy is actually very easy. It's just a matter of learning how to do that, and I'm sure the group here can help you get that sorted.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I ended up booking through the Captain Train site....but not without much stress along the way. Initially every departure I picked resulted in a "failed booking." Eventually I booked each leg as a one-way trip and got more success....but not without booking on the wrong day once (which I was able to reverse) and finally booking the outgoing leg twice (which I was not able to reverse). At least we have our travel booked.