I'm so confused….
We are planning on traveling Rome-Venice-Florence-Rome by train over the course of 10 days. I am looking at purchasing individual tickets for the three of us, but wonder if a rail pass would be more economical? Noticed that some trains required fees for reservations. Any ideas?
Posted by
Pa and Italy
4152 posts
A rail pass is never more economical in Italy. Just buy point to point tickets. If you know your travel dates you can save a lot of money by buying the tickets in advance. All seat reservation fees are included in the cost of point to point tickets, while with a pass they are an additional fee.
Donna
Posted by
Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
The train runs between Rome, Florence and Venice are some of the busiest in Italy. The fastest Italian trains run between these cities. 55 trains a day run each way each day between Rome and Florence. Italy charges a supplemental fee of 10Euro for each of these nice fast trains that you will be on. You must pay this supplemental fee to get your seat reservations. You can do this at the train station or you can do it online. You just can't walk up and board one of these nice fast trains without your seat reservations.
If you can really nail down you travel dates, you can go to www.trenitalia.com and take advantage of the discounted fares. These tickets are non-refundable but they are great values. If you can book 90-120 days ahead, you can see 19Euro fares for each of the runs you describe above. Regular fares are 43Euro between Rome and Florence and 80Euro between Rome and Venice. The discounted tickets are great values.
The Eurail pass is generally not a good value in Italy. You will have to deal with the reservations for each trip although you can do all of this at the same time online. Note that the new Italo train makes these same train runs and offer the same types of fares and discounts. However, Italo will not accept your Eurail pass.
Posted by
OP
2 posts
Thank you for the comments. I will book segments.
Posted by
Fort Lauderdale, FL
1246 posts
Agree with Donna. Buy point to point tickets as needed.
Posted by
12 posts
My wife and I traveled mostly by train in Italy just recently. One suggestion, is if you know about when you are leaving to the next city, buy your next train tickets at the train station you just arrived at or the night before you want to leave. We found out that by waiting till the day you want to leave, the cheaper tickets were all sold out or not even available. By stopping by the station, the night before we were to leave, they still had cheaper tickets and more choices. We went by train from Venice to Milan to Pisa to Florence and finally to Rome. also, look for the RED and WHITE ticket machines. There's also Green and white machines. They have several at most stations and are easy to use without anyone's help.