My husband and I will be traveling from Florence to Cinque Terre and then to Venice. I was wondering if we should purchase our train tickets in advance or if we can buy them the day of? Do the prices increase on the day of? Is it possible for a train to be sold out? How often do the trains run, would we be waiting hours at the train station if we buy them day of? Thank you!
Train tickets...buy in advance?
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You would almost never be waiting at a train station in Italy for hours for anything, and most trains would never be sold out, but yes, there are discounts available on trenitalia.com for advance purchases. There are lots of threads here on Fodors that you can read for more information.
Thank you!
From Florence to CT will be mostly the slow R trains. There is no point to buy R train tickets in advance as there are no discounts and no reserved seats. For Florence/Venice you can get discounts on the fast trains for booking in advance (Mini Fares).
StCirq is right--we just got home from Italy and didn't buy our tickets in advance since there wasn't that much of a discount buying ahead. When we arrived we bought tickets the day of for a train later in the day as we were not sure if we could find the right track in time. Turns out we did find it easily and asked a steward if we could get on the earlier train and the answer was a pleasant "Please-yes". So you know--that the train was all but empty. So you never know.
The main thing to remember is to get your train tickets date/time stamped at one of the yellow/orange before you board the train.
You didn't ask...but when we went to Venice we were there for 4 days and bought a water bus pass--best thing we ever bought. The water buses came around frequently and was very easy to take around the Venice canals and to the far islands.
Have a wonderful trip!
But you CAN get significant discounts by buying ahead!