Geneva to Venice help?

The station at the airport is directly under the airport.

The main station in Geneva is Geneve in French..

Most trains to Geneva continue the few minutes to the airport where they terminate instead in the town. You will likely join the train to your connection at the airport and just stay on as it goes through Geneva.

However, the 0742 Euro City - for example - originates in Geneve, so you take the 0724 train from the airport (to Brig) and go one stop, 7 minutes. Or you could take an earlier train, there are plenty.

The 0724 from the airport gets in on platform 4 and your train to Venice Santa Lucia goes 11 minutes later from platform 6.

No change in Milano, the train goes straight through (via Brig and Milano) and arrives on the edge of the Grand Canal at 1440. That should be a particularly scenic route. If you sit on the left side of the train you will be on the correct side to see the mountains as you go through Italy, and the big part of the lagoon as you go over the causeway into Venice.

Have a great trip...

Geneva airport railway station (Genève-Aéroport) is underneath the terminal.
As it is only a 9 minutes from Geneva airport to the centre of Geneva, you may prefer to stay in Geneva instead of at the airport.

You sometimes have to change at Brig, and sometimes at Milan (station: Milano Centrale), depending on the time of day you may be lucky and get a through train.

The railway station in the centre of Venice, on the Grand Canal is Venezia Santa Lucia. This is usually the last stop where the trains terminate. The stop before is Venezia Mestre, DO NOT get off here.

And if your plane into Geneva is delayed for some reason causing you to miss you bright and early flight the next morning...what will you do then? I would suggest spend a few extra dollars and fly to where you actually want to go.

Thanks Nigel, for the great info! I will use this.
Thank you, Chris, for the tip about Venezia Mestre!
Thanks, Tim, but we are taking a train to Venice....unless we find an affordable flight then. Playing by ear, really.

Also, is there a website I can pre-purchase train tickets?

Jenny, yes there is.
Since you are starting your journey in Switzerland, the obvious website is www.sbb.ch (Swiss Federal Railways). The alternative is http://www.trenitalia.com/ (Italian Railways).
I just checked, tickets for June are not yet available for Italy. So I picked a random date in April:
Genève 07:42 - Venezia S. Lucia 14:40 (6h58), SBB is currently offering a price of CHF 111.00 per person 2nd class.

Great! I wasn't sure the Italy trains ran through other countries. I am waiting until 2/18 to hop on and find fares on the Italy railway.
I'm a HUGE European traveling novice. As if you couldn't tell. =)

Jenny, Italian trains do run through other countries, you do not have to change trains at a border!

If a train runs between 2 countries, it is usually run jointly by the two railway companies.
In your case, a train running Geneva-Milan or Geneva-Milan-Venice is staffed by SBB staff up to the location where the tracks of the two companies join (in this case at a station called "Domodossola"), then the Swiss crew gets off and the Italian crew gets on.
Swiss ticketing prices and rules apply Geneva-Domodossola, from Domodossola onwards you pay Italian prices.
But, to the passenger this is all totally seamless, either railway company will sell you a ticket for the through journey.

The exception is companies like Eurostar (London-Paris), Thalys (Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam) etc. They run the train for the whole trip, and pay a toll to the companies that actually own the tracks.

Thanks, Chris.
Another question I have- is that price of 111.00 what I can expect to pay for each of us, even if I hop on the website on the day the fares are posted for that time table? Or will they be significantly cheaper, like I've been reading on the other boards?

Yes, that is the price you can expect to pay if you buy as soon as the tickets are released. That is why I chose 3 months in the future.

SBB has a fixed price, there is no price difference when you buy early. Italian railways have a different pricing policy for long distance trains. They offer deep discounts for booking ahead. But when you book ahead, you must choose which train you are travelling on, and cannot later change your mind. SBB are expensive (per Km), even Trenitalia "full price" is less per Km than SBB.

Curiously SBB is giving me the same price (CHF 111) for next Monday (8th Jan). Trenitalia is giving €32.00 for 21st April and says "Limited Seats". That is a lot cheaper. I can only suppose Trenitalia has got some special promotion for their section of the route that they didn't tell SBB about! That just doesn't sound right, as the SBB fare from Geneva to Domodossola is CHF 71. But if you can get a ticket at that price, go for it!

Whoever you do book with, try and and get a "print at home" ticket, or if that is not possible, a ticket posted to you. Then you have your ticket in your hand and can just get on the train.

P.S. You did notice I said CHF 111 and € 32. All these sites quote in their home currency.

Oh, and about sitting on the left in Italy, I forgot that it is no changes on that train and Milano Centrale is a dead end station, so the train will come into the station and stop, get a new engine on the back and go out just the way it came in so the left becomes right, and the right becomes left.....

Trenitalia has an international special very low fare on most runs if early enough. I can't remember the marketing name, but there's nothing wrong with it except the nonchangeable and nonrefundable nature of them.