We will be in France middle part of October and will stay a week in Avignon. We need to get to Rome for our return flight and are planning to stop in Florence for 2 days. We have 3 days for Italy and the 4th is the day we leave Rome.
Flights are not direct--have to fly to Brussels to get to Florence and trains will take many hours because there's no overnight train from France to Italy anymore. We're thinking about keeping our rental car and driving to Florence and stopping where we want along the way. According to maps this should take about 7-8 hours. Are we nuts to drive instead of train or fly? Anybody do this recently?
Posted by
US Pacific Northwest
10344 posts
The straight driving time is just over 7 hours--if you made no stops--to cover the 435 miles. You say you'll be "stopping where we want along the way", thus add your estimate of the time you will spend stopping along the way to the 7 hrs of straight driving time to get total travel time if you drive instead of taking the train.
Posted by
525 posts
I'd take the train. We were going to drive from LaSpezia to Orvieto but found it was going to take way too long in one day. Two days before we were leaving for Italy in 2007, we booked a B&B just outside Siena. Should have booked a room in Siena but.. We stopped at Pisa "along" the way. It too longer than expected and didn't get to our B&B until 5:00 pm.
I'd take the train rather than driving and besides, you won't want to drive in Florence anyway. The train station is very close to town that you would be able to walk to a B&B in Florence. You would have more time for sightseeing in Florence and more "rested".
Posted by
Minneapolis, MN, USA
8700 posts
If you pick up a rental car in one country and drop it off in another, you will likely have to pay a steep drop-off fee. It might be cheaper to drive to Nice, drop off your car, take a train to Genova, and pick up another car there.
There is one night train route you could take. Leave Avignon at 16:44 and arrive in Geneve at 19:42. Leave Geneve at 21:36 on a direct night train to Firenze, arriving at 06:41.
Posted by
in a train schedule...
267 posts
For the train, do the route Tim advised, but buy the segments separately. Buy the Avignon TGV-Geneve part on Voyages.sncf.com. Buy the Geneve-Florence part on Swiss Rail. For the Italian site, you need to create a login before purchasing tickets.