select pass vs. point to point

That seems like an awful lot of stops for a 3-week trip, is that ten cities?

Your route is fine. The question is how many nights in each location. Plus, you have a lot of train travel just to see Barcelona for one day.

With a rail pass in Italy, there is an 18Euro extra charge for seat reservations to ride the Eurstar-category trains. It's only a 3Euro charge if you ride the ICPlus-category trains. On some Eurostar runs, the 18Euro equals half the P2P fare which includes the seat reservations. With your itinerary above, you will be on these train categories for most of your Italy train journeys. On the Venice/Florence, Florence/Naples, Naples/Rome and some of the CT/Venice runs, the Eurostar class train is the most common of the faster (less stops) trains. Thus, you have an extra 72Euro ($110) or so in extra fees on top of the cost of your pass.

For some P2P costs, Venice/Florence is 32.30Euro on the Eurostar and 21.50Euro on the ICPlus. Florence/Naples is 52.30Euro (your most expensive train run). Naples/Rome is 36.10Euro on the AV (Eurostar-category) and 19.50 on the ICPlus. CT/Venice is 45.90Euro on multiple types of trains (you will be changing trains). Plus you will have another 40-50Euro for other Italy train travel. Much less than about 400Euro + 72Euro for fees.

Rebeka -- If you go to www.railsaver.com, you can enter your information and it'll figure out which might work best, railpass or ptp tickets, or a combination of both.

Beware of Railsaver. They sell railpasses, and their comparison is biased towards what they sell. They only consider the fastest, most expensive p2p connections. You can often do better if you do your research.

Remember, though, that railsaver.com exists to sell Eurail passes, so their P2P comparisons may not always be accurate. They will certainly NEVER list the discounts you can get on some of the national rail websites like voyages-sncf.com and trenitalia.com

One thing to watch for with Railsaver is that they are in the business of selling passes and their point-to-point search uses the most expensive base fares ignoring the special offers and advance purchase fares. The upside of this is that if they say a pass isn't a good deal you can be guaranteed that it isn't.

(posted at the same time as Norm)

Thanks so much for all the helpful replies!
About Barcelonia... we decided we would just like to see one city is Spain and decided on San Sebastian (based on a recommendation from a coworker who lives there). I couldn't find a route from San Sebastian to Arles (or somewhere in the Provence region, our next destination point) without going through Barcelonia. So... I found an overnight train to Barcelonia, thought we could at least spend part of the day there and head to Nimes (I couldn't find a way to Arles) in the late afternoon. That is the most confusing travel day we've planned. I'm still not sure if it's a good one...
With my unexperienced research, I thought we would get a 3 country select pass, for 8 travel days ($560 USD) and it seemed to make sense at the time. Our most expensive ride is from Paris to SanSebastian overnight. Now, understanding the Italian rail system better I'm wondering about point to point. I'll check the websites you gave me as well.
Thanks again -
Rebekah

Yes, I'm aware Railsaver is in the business of selling passes, but I think it's a good starting point for research. The flexibility that a railpass offers is sometimes worth it for certain legs of my itinerary, and I may not want to commit to a certain train departure time and buy a ticket ahead, even if it is cheap. It depends on a lot of factors.... and I'm right now trying to decide on a 6-day 3-country pass or an 8-day one.... decisions, decisions.

Hille....yes, but you can still get better prices for standard tickets at the station (walk up and purchase them) than you can on raileurope, railsaver, or any of those other railpass sites. For example, Railsaver tells me I should purchase the French 3-day 2nd class adult flexipass to make one trip from Paris to Nice...cost, $258. From voyages-sncf.com I can see that the same trip on the same day, walkup price, will cost $125, and I can exchange or refund it right up until train time. I can get it as low as $61 with conditions. A traveller may decide to solidify a schedule to save some money if they know the specials are available....through the railpass websites, you don't even know they exist. If you want a fair, honest comparison, it's still better to spend a little extra time surfing the national rail websites than to use the rail pass websites. BTW, having a rail pass doesn't mean you can just jump on any train anymore. Many of the fast trains require reservations (you'll pay extra with a pass) that you have to make at the railway station anyway.