Understanding train reservations in Italy

Michelle - The price of the tickets at the trenitalia site include the Seat reservation fee if needed. The railpass would need an extra seat reservation, for R trians I believe that is 3 euros for Eurostars I believe 10 euros.

ok thanks, that clears some things up for me. I have searched different sites to try and get an idea of the time schedules and prices and some sites are giving me different times. What site should I be using? Also, does anyone suggest doing point to point tickets are getting the 4day rail pass with the 2 person discount?

If you get a 4 day Italy pass and the train route you want to take has an R by it, then you have to go to the train station and make a reservation for that train which will require an additional fee. If you are on the train without a reserved seat, the conductor will fine you. This is the downside of obtaining a rail pass for Italy. Many of their trains require a reservation. Sometimes there are trains that do not require a reservation. These trains usually do not run during the busy time of day and they are often the regional trains--not the high speed trains. Hope this helps. Two years ago, we returned our Italy passes because of the additional fees required for reservations. It just wasn't cost effective for the few train trips we were going to make.

Michelle,

Generally speaking, it's cheaper to purchase P-P tickets in Italy rather than using a Railpass. You might enter each of your trips into www.railsaver.com to see what the site suggests (I believe the site is owned by Rail Europe so keep that in mind).

If you purchase a P-P ticket, the price will include a reservation if one is required for that particular route. As Denise mentioned, DON'T be caught without a reservation if required, as you WILL be fined on the spot (trust me on that one!).

You might want to research each of your journeys on the bahn.de website so that you have some idea on which routes require reservations. Once you've determined which train to take in each case, click the arrow on the left to "drop down" the details of that selection, which will show the reservation status.

You may find it useful to have a look at www.ricksteves.com/rail/usepass.htm#sup for information on "reservations". You could also download the free PDF Rail Guide in the "Railpasses" section for additional information.

Happy travels!

I think you are mixing two uses of "R". When Rick uses "R" he probably is referring to the timetables on the German Rail site which use that symbol to show which trains require reservations.

When Trenitalia uses "R" it indicates that the train is a regional train. There is open seating on those trains and no reservations are possible. If you look for more details on a particular route, then the Trenitalia site will show an "R" with a box around it to indicate that a reservation is required on a specific train.

For example, if you take an IC train from Rome to Chiusi and a regional train from there to Siena, you will need a seat reservation for the leg on the IC train. You can also travel that route entirely on regional trains and then there would be no reservations at all.

We can make it easy for you; get the point to point tickets. When you buy a railpass you are entitled to travel long distances across the country and they need to price it accordingly; your travels are all in a relatively circumscribed area. So you're paying for transportation you won't use. Not only that you don't even buy convenience because on any but the slowest trains you'll need a reservation (at an extra cost).

As Mike said get p to p tickets. We usually rent a car when in Italy but used trains last summer. Did EuroStar & InterCity which both require a reservation which comes with/included in the price of your p to p tkt. Also used Regional where there are no reservations. Be sure to validate your ticket in the little machine on the platform prior to boarding your train. Every train we rode on last summer we saw someone getting fined--people with passes who did not make reservations or on regional trains people who did not validate. Regionial tkts. are good for 2 months from purchase price so if you don't validate them the conductor doesn't know if you have already used it or are trying to use if over again. We just validated all of our tkts regardless of what train we were riding just to be safe even though I had heard that you don't need to validate tkts for any trains that require reservations. Read up in Rick's books on train travel. His Italy book has a sample train tkt. with interpretation of what each item means. www.roninrome has lots of good info. on train travel in Italy. Buon Viaggio!!