Train travel in Italy

Don't stress. There's almost no way you could make an advance purchase railpass pay for itself. Just buy the tickets when you get there and have a great trip!

Use www.raileurope.com or www.trenitalia.com to see how much tickets will cost. Just put in the dates of travel and the cities. Then look at all the different rail passes at www.raileurope.com or Rick Steve's railpass area and see if any 1 rail pass is cheaper than all of your point-to-point tickets added together. Then you can decide which is better.

There are Eurostars running between Rome/Venice and Rome/Florence. As an example, there is a Eurostar that leaves at 8:50am from Rome and arrives in Venezia Santa Lucia 4.5hrs later. Standard one-way 2nd class fare for one is 51 Euro. The Rome/Florence Eurostar takes 1h 36m. The standard one-way 2nd class fare is 33 Euro. You will need seat reservations for all seats on the Eurostar. You can easily get these in the Rome train station or a travel agency near the train station.

my advice is don't buy the tix here, buy them when you're there. Rick's guide also says that a rail pass in Italy seldom saves you money over buying tix as you go. If you buy a pass you have to figure out now which is the right one (how many days), etc. And it sounds like you want some flexibility (eg. maybe Fano, maybe no). We traveled last fall about the same time you will be there for 2 weeks, all by train. Had absolutely no problem buying the tix as we go, same day purchases.

Although if I was doing it again I'd buy the tix a day in advance so I didn't go down to the train station with bags only to find out the train we wanted wasn't leaving for 3 hours. Almost every train station has automated kiosks. Select the British flag and you get an english menu. You can look at when trains go, how long it takes (eg. Eurostar, etc) and what it costs. Instead of worrying now about Eurostar let the machine do the thinking! If you can use an ATM you can use these.

Point-to-point tickets allow you to purchase your tickets and get seat reservations on that train at the same time. When purchasing a rail pass, if the train you are going to travel on is a Eurostar, or for that matter, any train that requires compulsory reservations, you HAVE TO make reservations for that train at that time which requires additional $$. I decided on point-to-point. Prior to leaving the states, I printed off train schedules on the Plan Your Rail Trip section of Eurail Pass Store here on Rick Steves' web site. I had an idea of what time the trains were leaving for that particular day I wanted to travel. Then used the machines in the train station. Don't forget to get the tickets time stamped at the yellow timestamp machines prior to getting on the train. It will come together--don't worry.

I am definitely recommending this site to my friends and relatives. This the first time I am using Rick Stves' services, including this Graffiti Wall, and I am most impressed with people's eagerness to assist other travelers. THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE. It has been most valuable. CIAO