Do you folks have to be together every minute of your holiday?

I recently had a similar event. My train seat was taken. The folks that had my seat were displaced by others.

My take was no big deal. I ended up having a nice conversation with a young English couple, the male lived in Italy and his girlfriend was visiting.

If you're going to see the world, why don't you try to have simple conversations with folks from that world? I do all the time, and rather enjoy it.

I found, as a single traveler, if you hold up a book you're reading that's in English, conversation will come soon enough.

If you don't want to talk and the folks are bashing the U.S., pretend to sleep. You'll learn a lot from their conversation.

See the world, enjoy the culture and people, or stay in your little cocoon and worry if all your seats are together.

Really, does it matter? And it's all together, not altogether (different concepts). It's just a train ride; you'll all enjoy it even if you're not sitting together. Apparently 4 seats together aren't available on that run, so make the best of it.

Seat numbering is almost impossible to understand – we spent most of the trip from Rome to Venice trying to understand the sequence, and failed. It was an interesting exercise.

The reassuring thing, though, is that somehow the system seems to know the seat number maps. So there’s a probability that your seats are all together – even though the numbers might indicate otherwise.

And I at least can fully understand why you would want to book four seats together.

This is the revised Trenitalia numbering system which will come in on all trains as from June 2012, and is already on a few refurbished Frecciarossas. I didn't think they'd introduced it on any Frecciabiancas though.

A, B, C, D are seats abreast across the width of the car. The number is the row number. A and D are always window seats.

In first class, with 2+1 seating as opposed to 2nd class 2+2, there will be no letter 'C', just A & B (next to each other) and D on the other side of the aisle.

So not sure why you say there's no B.

That still also leaves the question of why it isn't giving you (say) 5A, 5B, 6A, 6B around a table for four...

Hey hk,

The worst thing that can happen is that you will ask the person taking up one of your 4 seats if he/she would switch with your odd seat, and that person will say "no".

In that case, the 4 of you will spend the next 2:39 hr staring at them in disapproval.