Trenitalia Website vs. Machines vs. Ticket Counter?

The only reason, but it is a good one, to buy on line is to take advantage of the sometimes deep discounts available. But that locks you into a fixed schedules with very limited change opportunities. Buying at the window or machine is same price.

All trains in Italy, except the Regionale, require a seat reservation that comes with the purchase of the ticket. Those ticket are only good for one time - the date and time specified on the ticket. Miss the train the ticket is dead and no refund. Regionale tickets should never be purchased on line.

So if you check prices on the specific trains you want you can decide whether the difference is worth it to you. For me, it WAS worth reserving in advance for Rome-Naples, Naples-Florence and Florence-Venice both for cost savings and for knowing we had seats for the trains before we left home.

Just a comment about machines and ticket counters. A year ago in the stations we used (Milan, Verona, Rome, and more) it seemed there was always a long line of folks waiting to talk to a live person at the ticket counter. My impatience sent me to a machine that was almost always available. But be aware that not all machines take cash, if that's what you wanted to use for the ticket purchase; and once a guy appeared beside me at the machine wanting to "help" me. Have a great trip!

Thanks everyone.

Our first leg is from Roma to Vernazza and the time and date for that trip is not going to change, so I think booking online will be more convenient. I read elsewhere that on the Trenitalia site you can opt for a ticketless option wherein all you need is a confirmation number to show the train conductor. At the same time, I've also read that conductors don't always accept .pdf or any other "non-hardcopy" tickets. For those of you that have used Trenitalia for your ticket purchases, what do you get at the end of the transaction? A screen shot of the ticket that you can print out? Or do they mail you an actual ticket?

We used the ticketless option and it was fabulous - they send the email to you with your PNR code, and that's all you need; I printed out a copy to take with me to make it easily scannable, but you don't have to have a printout, you can just have the PNR number or the email etc on your phone. If you have an iphone, you can save a .pdf file to iBooks and never have to worry about having internet access to look at email files either. Conductor came once, entered our PNR code, and that was it!

The eticket will come to you in less than a minute after you complete your purchase. I print out the tickets and take hard copies with me, but the smartphone or ibooks options are good, too.

Are you going from Rome on your arrival day?

Our trip will begin in Rome, our first destination upon arrival from the states. The plan is to spend 4 nights in Rome and then head up to Vernazza and spend 4 nights there. After that it's a little fuzzy. We depart out of Nice though. Total of two weeks for the whole trip.

From personal experience, my advice is to try get your train ticket a little in advance of your departure, such as when you arrive in that town, or earlier on the day of your travel, rather than waiting til the last minute. I have missed trains, and once a boat, because of the length and slowness of ticket counter lines, even in small towns, and sometimes ticket machines fail you, either because they will not accept your credit card, or do not accept cash, or cannot make change. If you arrive at the station with ticket (or e-mail ticket) in hand, you just go to your track, maybe with time for a slice, a cone or a cuppa along the way.

KC, great that you can consider purchasing early. You can get some great discounts but they are non-refundable. You don't indicate when you intend to travel but you can buy tickets on www.trenitalia.com up to 119 days in advance. It's really 120 days but often times the 120th day doesn't show. The only difficulty is if mid-June or mid-December is inside the 119 day window. These are update periods for the Trenitalia schedules and you most often cannot see many of the runs beyond those dates.

Roma-Termini to Vernazza is quite easy. Two routings. One via Florence, Pisa and La Spezia. The other is via the western part of Italy (Civitavecchia, Pisa and La Spezia). The routing via Florence is more expensive as you will be on the very fast trains from Rome to Florence. You will change trains at La Spezia Centrale no matter which routing you choose. This last train will be a Regionale train.

Yes you can buy the entire run in advance on www.trenitalia.com. Normally, you cannot purchase Regionale tickets online more than 7 days out from the time of travel. However, when combined with a fast train, you can. And, you will have the seat reservations on the fast train and the ticket for the Regionale train will be pre-validated that will have to be used within 4 hours. You will receive all tickets within a couple of minutes after purchase. You can print out at home. For the fast train, you will see a 6-character (numbers, letters) PNR code. This is your ticket. The conductor carries a wireless PDA that he uses to enter the code into the train system. You're good to go. For the Regionale ticket, you will not see a PNR code but you will see an 8-digit code. The ticket will say that it is pre-validated.

Here's a screenshot of a partial schedule for Dec 10. Notice that I did not go past mid-December. Note the starting fares. Not bad. http://gyazo.com/da717cf3b6d31d9cfd781c7ef27743bd

Thanks Larry, Looks like I'll be taking the coastal route from Rome to Vernazza. One thing though, I wasn't able to find a ticket for Vernazza (or any other Italian destination) into Nice. Is it not possible to book journeys from Italy to other countries? I tried Deutschbahn as well and wasn't able to find any journeys into Nice.

It does not show up on Trenitalia because you must change trains at Ventimiglia to a French train. There are no through trains crossing the border here, so it will not show up on the Trenitalia site. It does show at www.bahn.co, the end point is Nice Ville. Most routes start with a Regionale train to either La Spezia or Monterosso, change to an IC train to Genova Piazza Principe, change to a train (IC or RE) to Ventimiglia, change to a RE train to Nice. 5 1/2 to 7 hours. Trenitalia will show you the schedule as far as Ventimiglia. You can buy in advance as long as there is at least one IC train in the itinerary, but some are only using Regionale trains and they can only be bought 7 days in advance maximum.

KC, as Sam indicates, there are only Regionale and IC trains from the CT to Nice Ville. Trenitalia does not see Nice Ville. It used to but no longer. Full fare to Ventimiglia is 25.80Euro. Best discount in advance is 11.40Euro-15.80Euro. If you want to purchase the non-refundable discounted tickets in advance, simply purchase the Trenitalia tickets from Vernazza to Ventimiglia. Nice Ville is about 30 minutes to the west on a French regional train. The trains are frequent and you can buy the ticket into France at Ventimiglia. Don't worry about seats. First, no seat reservations on the regional train. Second, the train into France originates in Ventimiglia. It's empty.

And the train continues into France in the same direction. When you get on the French train and go upstairs, try to sit on the left facing the front. The views of the Med between the Italian border and Nice Ville are spectacular.

Excellent info from everyone. Thank you.

I have some other rail related questions but since they aren't related to ticketing I'll start a new thread for it.

Thanks again!