We will be travelling in Italy and France in May - June. Plan is to fly to Rome and then visit Florence, Venice and Cinque Terra. Next we need to get to France- to Marmande which is between Bordeaux and Toulouse where we will rent a canal boat. The final leg is to get to Charles de Gaul in Paris for flight back to Canada.
Does it make financial sense to buy a 2 country train pass and do all the travel by train. Or fly Easy Jet from Milan to Bordeaux and from Bordeaux to Paris?. Flights are about $50 pp per leg. Also would an all train trip make life simpler? I am not sure about train travel time from Italy to France. Any advice would be welcomed.
Posted by
Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
Ron, it almost never makes sense to buy any kind of pass for Italy. If you plan 119 days ahead of travel, you can buy Trenitalia tickets for Rome/Florence, Florence/Venice for 19Euro each and the ticket from Venice to the CT for under 30Euro. The tickets are non-refundable and cannot be exchanged but the value is there. Careful planning is required. With your limited travel in France, you don't need a pass there either.
Your trip from the CT to Marmande will be quite challenging. It's very difficult to get either a plane or train into the Bordeaux region. Nothing is direct. Current train schedules on www.bahn.de show the travel time from the CT to Marseille St. Charles to be 9hrs with 2 train changes. At Marseille St. Charles, you can change to a train to Marmande. This part of the journey will take 5.0hrs-6.0hrs with no train changes. About 15hrs overall.
Finding a flight is seriously tough. Not much from Pisa to either Bordeaux or Toulouse. But, there are flights from Milan-MXP to Bordeaux with one stop at Lyon-Saint-Exupery. About 4hrs. But, it takes 4hrs to get to Malpensa and another hour to Marmande. The airline is Hop airline. Seems to be a French budget airline.
Posted by
Tucson
4183 posts
When you use the DB Bahn site, be sure to click on the map to see your route(s). If you are at all interested in seeing the scenery along the way, the train would be the way to do it -- and it sounds like it may be almost as fast as flying with the complications already mentioned. This is the link to the English search page: http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en.
Posted by
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
4088 posts
Hop! is a new budget line in the Air France group, trying to compete with established no-frills carriers such as easyJet.
If you are not familiar with budget lines, be careful about flight connections. Many of the cheap lines do not connect between their flights; luggage must be retrieved and checked back in at the connection.
Budget lines are covered by www.skyscanner.com and www.whichbudget.com Try a reverse search: Enter Toulouse and see what Italian cities come up, then reverse the search by entering your preferred Italian departure city to Toulouse.
Don't assume that rail passes are automatically a good deal. The bible on railroad travel is www.seat61.com which discusses passes versus point-to-point fares. Last year the French system dropped out of some international passes.
Posted by
San Francisco Bay Area (USA)
16057 posts
Your itinerary should be in this order to maximize efficiency of travel:
ROME > CINQUE TERRE > FLORENCE > VENICE
Or also the exact opposite if you prefer to fly into Venice and fly out of Rome:
VENICE > FLORENCE > CINQUE TERRE > ROME
Both options above work, although my preference would be for the second for 3 reasons:
1. Venice is easier when you deal with jet lag adaptation
2. Venice airport is a hassle to reach if your departure is early in the morning
3. Rome airport is only 30 min. from the city center and has more options to both Toulouse and Bordeaux.
Toulouse has non stop flights from/to Rome with EasyJet, AirFrance, Alitalia.
AirFrance flies non stop to Venice as well. EasyJet has seasonal (summer only) flights to Venice.
Bordeaux has direct flights from/to Rome with HOP! and RyanAir (Rome Ciampino). Volotea has direct flights from/to Venice and Florence (Summer only).
Given where you are going, the train trip from Italy to France is too long IMO. I would go via air with one of the options illustrated above. Just use the train within Italy.
If this were my trip I would do:
- Fly into VCE from Canada (via any EU hubs).
- visit places in this order: VENICE > FLORENCE > CINQUE TERRE > ROME
- Fly out of Rome to either Toulouse or Bordeaux
- Rent boat for France portion of trip
- Fly back to Canada directly from BOD via CDG (or AMS or DUB depending on which airline you use).
Posted by
Huntsville, AL, USA
8319 posts
You can fly from Rome-Fiumicino Airport to Bordeaux-Merignac Airport on HOP!, a budget airline owned by Air France. You can also get to there from Milan-Malpensa on EasyJet.com and from Rome-Ciampino on RyanAir.
You might want to change the order of itinerary to end up at one of these locations to get cheap flights.
Flights to Paris from Bordeaux-Merignac are limited to Air France. EasyJet and the other budget carriers don't fly to Paris from there.