Italy train trip itinerary ideas?

dbrookf

Thinking of flying to somewhere nice in Italy this year, staying 2 nights and then maybe 7 days travelling to a couple of interesting places by train – with hopefully four or five days just chilling out at the end. Anyone done this and/or have a recommendation for easy itinerary?

richardw

This subject comes up quite often, what do fancy seeing, when do you want to visit, do you want to chill out at the end by the beach, lake, country side or city?

Where in the UK are you?

D_M_E

Flying to Italy - go to Pisa and get the train from the airport to Florence, you have to change at Pisa Centrale.

If your flight lands early morning and you don't have a lot of luggage, have a look around Pisa and visit the Tower and cathedral and have a look around the town.

Florence - Florence itself is worth visiting on its own for a month, but - from here, if you get tired of all that Florence has to offer - you can do day trips to Siena, the Cinque Circe towns, Arezzo, Verona, Cremona and, if feeling adventurous, take an early fast train to Rome and have a look round Rome and see what's on offer there and maybe plan a future visit to see the city more.

In italy you will find most towns and cities have a local bus service, but for getting between towns and cities you will usually find that regional trains are cheaper than the bus, and for long distance travel between cities, such as Rome to Milan for example, the regional trains are cheaper than the fast frecciarossa or Italo trains, both of which are express and hardly stop anywhere between departure station and journey's end.

Some airports have train stations, for example Pisa, Milan Malpensa (I think), Rome Fiumicino and others, but a lot have buses.

Florence airport has buses and taxis but there is a new tram line - called tramvia - which is either currently under test or has fininished testing and is now offering express trams to the city centre for a fare of about 2euros.

Another way to go would be via Eurostar from various points across the UK - your local station to London then London to Italy via Eurostar - have a look at https://www.seat61.com

EDIT - DON'T FORGET when in Italy and travelling by train you MUST stamp and validate your ticket in the little machines before you get on the train or, if you don't, you WILL be fined. This also applies to bus tickets - the stamping machine is on the bus, stamp your ticket when you get on.
Train tickets - once it's validated/stamped, you have I think 4 hours to complete your journey if it's a short one.
Bus tickets - generally, once your ticket has been stamped/validated, you can go anywhere in the city for one hour (some allow 70 minutes) then you have to stamp another ticket for another hour and so on.

bagand96

Train travel between most of the major cities in Italy is excellent. Modern high speed trains and fairly reasonable prices as well.

Like the U.K. you can get cheaper fares booking in advance. This website will help with planning the rail travel https://www.seat61.com

There’s two companies Trenitalia, the national operator, and Italo, a private operator who operate on intercity routes. Both have English websites that are easy to use and tickets get emailed by PDF to print.

As Richard says, there’s endless possibilities in Italy, it really depends on what you want to see and do.

D_M_E

The Italian national trains can be found at https://www.trenitalia.com and their competitors for intercity can be found at https://www.italo.com or something similar, search for Italo Trains

richardw

D_M_E wrote: »

Flying to Italy - go to Pisa and get the train from the airport to Florence, you have to change at Pisa Centrale....

Btw the train from Pisa airport has been replaced with Pisa Mover shuttle train.

The Bologna Mover is under construction.

barbarawright

Bologna is a very good location with at least a dozen other interesting cities within 90 minutes on the train

Kynthia

There's been a few multi-centre Italy posts before so do a search f8r more ideas.

Getting the train between cities is certainly doable. Think about what type of places you'd like to see (cities, art, beaches, volcanos, history, scenic spots, etc) then see where is just a train ride away from each other and where you can fly in to and out from.

I flew to Venice, stayed for 4 nights, train to Rome for 3 nights, train to Sorrento for 6 nights, then flew home from Naples. Sorrento was a good base for seeing Vesuvius, Pompeii, and Capri all by public transport.

katejo

barbarawright wrote: »

Bologna is a very good location with at least a dozen other interesting cities within 90 minutes on the train

I was going to suggest exactly the same. Have been many times and plan another trip later this year.

Dr.Rock

Did similar last September.
Flew to Bologna from where I went to Florence for a couple of days, then back to Bologna and on to Rimini (a good place to chill out on the beach). I also did day trips to Modena/Maranello (a must if you are a Ferrari fan), San Marino and Ravenna.