Our family of 3 needs to travel from Rome to Aix en Provence. Can anyone help me price this? We are also considering flying and would like to compare the options. We need to return to Aix sometime Monday, April 1, 2013 and are fine with traveling overnight if this is reasonably priced. (I've tried Trenitalia and the bahn. de website but neither gives me prices.)
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Posted by
Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
Karen, by train, this is a 13hr journey with 4-5 train changes. Routing is via Milan/Ventimiglia/Nice/Marseille/Aix-en-Provence. The best flight option is Rome/Lyon on www.easyjet.com. This is a non-stop flight. Then, you have to get to the Lyon Part Dieu train station for the 2hr train ride to Aix. I see 194Euro right now for April 1. Could have been much lower had you booked earlier. You could fly Rome/Nice but its a 4.0hr ride to Aix from Nice on the train.
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
The closest airport to Aix is Marseille (MRS). Looking at www.skyscanner.com for April 1 from Rome, I see one direct flight on Air France/Alitalia, departing FCO at 9:20 and arriving MRS at 10:45 (1 hour 25 minutes). It costs $148 (Alitalia) and $154 (Air France). It appears to be only one flight with two different numbers (code share), since each has the exact same arrival and departure times. Since these are not budget carriers, you should not have to pay as many extras as on EasyJet, so this will be close to your final price (of course, you have to double check). From MRS, there's a bus every half hour to Aix (taking about 30 minutes). Given the many train changes on this route, I'd fly.
Posted by
OP
Metairie, LA, USA
28 posts
Thank you for your replies! Harold, I've been looking at this flight and went to Skyscanner. This is my first time using it and it looks helpful. Do you know if you can do multi-city flights? I've only seen round trip and one way flights. I sincerely appreciate your help!
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
Karen, I see what you mean about Skyscanner not having a multi-city option. But there are other search engines for European flights, like http://www.opodo.co.uk/. I haven't tried Kayak for intra-European flights (it may not pull up the budget carriers). If you're dealing with budget carriers, they do not have discounts for round trips (all trips are one-ways), so you can string together as many of these as you need. If you're dealing with "legacy" carriers like Alitalia and Air France, their websites do have multi-city options.