Italy Travels: Florence to Cinque Terra to Venice

Most posters on this forum have been unable to use the Trenitalia website to purchase tickets online. Here's a link that explains what's going on http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/28176/how-to-use-your-visa-card-to-buy-trenitalia-tickets.html

Sarah, I suspect that your July dates are too far out. Trenitalia will update their schedule in mid-June. I too see No Solution Found. Try early May. What you see now will change little or not at all when the schedules are updated. CLICK HERE for the early morning schedule. Click on next to see later train runs. Second, your journey from Florence to Cinque Terre will be on a Regionale train. Even if you could buy tickets on Trenitalia, they don't let you select most Regionale tickets. Buy your tickets when you get to Florence.

For your trip to Venice from the CT, the fastest run of the day departs La Spezia Centrale at 7:52am. It's a Regionale train. You change trains once in Bologna to a Eurostar. You arrive in Venice just after 2:00pm.

Your cheapest way to get from Paris to Florence is to fly easyJet from Paris Orly to Pisa and take a train directly from the airport to Florence.

Your cheapest choices for Venice-Paris are Venice Marco Polo-Paris Orly on Myair and Venice Marco Polo-Paris CDG on easyJet.

To search for all your budget airline choices in Europe, go to www.flylc.com. www.whichbudget.com, and www.skyscanner.net.

Hey Sarah,

Good you planned extra time for travel! And if you get here (in italy) without having purchased your point to point tickets, you will be fine. Worse case scenario you don't have the best seat on the train or have to take up residence near the exit area. It happens to all of us... its just part of the adventure.

Planes
I agree with everything above. Not much flys into our out of the Florence airport.. its all happening at Pisa. No worries, there is a train stop at the airport so you can hop on and for 4.8 euro be in Florence in just over an hour.

Trains
Florence -> CT is not that far at all (a few hours max). You can probably make a pit stop in Pisa as it is along the way.

CT -> Venice is a bit further (expect half a day for that one). When you are picking a ticket, aim for the RAIL ticket, not the EUROSTAR lines! sometimes the IC trains are cheap, too - but RAIL is always the cheapest train (and consequently the slowest, but you've planned in extra time, so why not save some $ on a train and spend it in Venice?

As far as your problem with trenitalia - make sure you are entering Day/Month/Year. Also, remember if you are on the italian website florence=firenze. If you are entering it all right, its not uncommon that the website is making an error. Trenitalia was my nemesis for my first month here. Try putting in Pisa instead of Firenze to see the times trains are arriving at la spezia (and tack on 1 hr in advance, thats probably when it leaves the main train station in florence). No worries, they are frequent, I've been looking up pisa-la spezia for my own travel plans lately.

If its possible - message me if you have more questions. I live here (Bologna), and I've been to all of those places (except CT but I'm going soon!) so I can help out with the little details.

Thank you all for the advice!! Maybe we will have to fly into Pisa but it sounds doable to get to Florence pretty easily.

1) My main question now is: is it worth trying to see Florence, Cinque Terra and Venice in one 8 day trip? We really want to see all 3. But are we packing in too much into our trip, even with the travel days scheduled in? Going from CT to Venice IS half a day. Thanks for the tip on leaving at7:52 and arriving in 2pm...that could work well, if all goes according to plan.
We're treating this Italy trip like it's the one shot we've got to see it. But I hope we don't arrive in Venice and think "oh man we should have just come here like 3 days ago!"

2) We are thinking of getting Eurail passes for our train rides in Italy. Does that work if all the trains are 'regionale'?

3) I will now reread the specifics of all your helpful posts--thanks again

Do NOT buy railpasses for travel solely within Italy. If you take any fast EuroStar Italia trains, you will pay 15-20 euro for seat reservations on top of the cost of your pass. Even if you take any fast trains, point-to-point tickets will be cheaper. And regional trains are dirt cheap.

are you only doing overnight in Venice?
If so that is not enough time. Some places overnight may be ok. Even though I have never been to venice yet (coming up soon), my research tells me you need two days MINIMUM.

My friends and I did a brief overnight trip to Venice from Florence. I don't think we were even there a full 24 hours but we saw a lot in the time we did have. I had been there before so I mostly just shopped for glass, lace, and masks, but I think the friends got a good sense of Venice being their first time. They went up the campanile and into St. Marks Basillica (sp?). I wouldn't suggest staying there for the brief of time because it is a magical place but if you want to see it then go for it.

Our plan as of now is to get to Venice about 3pm and stay 2 nights. So we'd be there for half the day and then one full day and leave on the third...

So that's like, 40 hours? in Venice....hmm thanks for all the input, not sure what we'll do yet!

Also, thanks for the tips on the Eurail passes!!

If you want to visit St. Marks and/or the Doge's palace, just be sure to be there early to beat the crowds from the cruise ships.