In June we are flying to Europe for 12 days starting in Frankfurt ending in Rome we want to see the Alps, Florence, and Venice on the way. What would be the best train route and ticket options?
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19109 posts
By Alps, I assume you mean the Berner Oberland. If you book well ahead of time online from German Rail, you should be able to get a Europa-Spezial Schweiz fare for €39 per person. These are date and train specific fares and are non-refundable, so it wouldn't be advisable to plan that leg of the trip for immediately after scheduled landing at FRA. You might want to make the tickets for the next day from Bacharach to Interlaken Ost, and go to Bacharach for the first night.
From Interlaken, you could proceed to Italy via Brig and Milan or via Zürich, Lugano, and Milan. Others here can better advise you as to the best fares from Interlaken to Italy.
In Italy, it is probably more cost effective to buy individual, point-point tickets rather than use a rail pass and pay a considerable premium train supplement for using the Italian Eurostar express trains.
However, in the larger scope, it is probably not possible to predict whether discount and point-point fares are better than a rail pass and supplements. You need to come up with a definite itinerary, then see what discount tickets you can come up with and compare that to a pass.
Posted by
OP
Allen, TX, USA
10 posts
We will take the map out and study more on the route I will take a look at your suggestions, so do you think a select pass for 3 countries is not usually the best way to go for two people? Keep in mind we are first timers at this. Thanks
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19109 posts
You can get schedules and prices from Swiss Rail and Trenitalia. Sometimes these sites won't give you the fare from one country to another, but you can approximate it by using the fares to/from the closest town to the border in that country.