Best Site to purchase eruo rail tickets

Both of those sites are rip-offs. They only show trains that they happen to sell tickets to, and at a huge mark-up. Head over to the official Italian Rail website for the real schedule:

http://www.trenitalia.com

The site doesn't accept US credit cards for advance tickets. But you won't have any problems purchasing tickets once you arrive in Italy:

http://www.roninrome.com/%20transportation/buying-a-train-ticket

If you're traveling outside of Italy, these sites are also useful:

http://rail.ch

http://www.bahn.de

http://tgv-europe.com (tell the site you live in the UK)

http://www.thalys.com

If all you need is a ticket from Venice to Milan, there probably is no good reason to buy in advanced. There may be some discount for advanced purchases, but probably not for the relatively short distance you want to travel. You could probably most easily just buy your ticket on the day of travel.

thanks guys,

This information is very helpfull.

As Tom pointed out, there are a lot of train connections from Venice to Milan; you shouldn't have trouble buying them in Italy, particularly a day or two in advance. You can find out the price on the Trenitalia website, and that is the same price as at a counter over there.

In Germany, I only buy tickets in advance when get a really good discount that way.

Most national rail websites, like Swiss Rail, sbb.ch, only sell tickets online for travel entirely in the country. German Rail (bahn.de), however, also sells tickets online for legs with one end in Germany and the other end outside. If you call German Rail (in Germany) they will sell you tickets from anywhere in Europe to anywhere and mail them to you for about $5.

As mentioned, RailEurope sells tickets for a limited selection of trains, usually only the fastest, most expensive express trains, and often not all of them. Plus, since they are a reseller, they add their commission to the counter price.

By the way, there is no such thing as a "Euro Rail" ticket. Eurail is not a railroad; it is an organization put together by the European national railroads (SNCF, Bahn, etc), amongst others, to market rail passes in the US. They don't sell point-point tickets.

The Swiss Rail site does sell international tickets via it's web site for journeys to or from CH.

When did Swiss Rail start that? Last time I wanted a price for a cross-border ticket I couldn't get it online. I had to fill out a request and they emailed it to me.

It is a new feature...about a year old. For example, if you go to rail.ch and do a search for Milan to Zurich, you can get the fare price instantly and book online and have the ticket mailed to the US (for an additional fee).