bhinde

what time do trains start in venice.how difficult is it to catch an early morning train with having to get from the hotel and travel to the station by water.

I am thinking about taking the train from venice to florence.

kmoncrief

look for the posts on Italian trains.Info on their for schedules.. very easy to get to train station!

Lorac1127

The website is www.trenitalia.com for train information.

BowenLinda

... and http://www.actv.it/eng/ for vaporetto schedules.

Daneille

try the trenitalia website where you can search for the Venice to Florence timetable www.trenitalia.it

Also the vaporetto's (the venice water buses) run like normal buses (busier during the peak commuter hours). Also be aware that large suitcases will be charged as a person (ie. you and your suitcase will be charged as 2 people).

The peak hour vaporetto's get quite crowded and you may have to miss one if they are overfull so you will need to calculate that into your travel time.

Thomas_Milligan

The earliest train from Venice to Florence leaves at 6:32. The vaporetto starts running at 4:16 (Line 1 along the Grand Canal).

ira

Hi bh,

Are you planning on doing a daytrip to Florence from Venice?

I strongly urge you to either do an overnight or to save Florence for another visit.

GeoffHamer

The vaporetti in Venezia run all night. The night route along the Grand Canal has a different number, but there are boats every hour or so.

Janeyre

We took the train from Venice to Florence in June-our first experience with Italian trains. One tip for we train newbies-the final destination on the arrival/departure board did not say Florence (i.e. Santa Maria Novella-Florence), it said "Roma" with SMN in smaller letters before Roma. Threw us off a bit until another tourist overhearing our confusion explained. I was then able to help two other sets of travelers with the same issue, although sometimes the major sub-stop was not on the board.

We bought our train tickets from a Venice travel agency (based on Rick Steve's advice/directions). If you do this I can not impress how helpful it was to have a computer printout from the trenitalia web site brought from home showing the exact train/times we wanted. It made purchasing a breeze and little room for misunderstanding. Another tip from this board was to write down all the stops the train makes (i.e. between Venice and Florence) so you weren't caught by surprise when the train came to your stop. This was helpful as well as the computerized rolling message at the front of the train indicating the next stop. Second class worked out well.
Enjoy your trip!

GAC

There are seven Eurostar Italia trains per day (not all run on Sundays) between Venice and Florence, beginning at 6:32 a.m. and thereafter every two hours until 18:32. All these trains proceed to Rome (final destination). Travel time to Florence is about 3 hrs., to Rome 4.5 hours. All trains stop very briefly in Mestre, Padova, Rovigo, Ferrara and Bologna.

Mischka

You won't have a problem getting the water bus to the station early in the morning, and we were never charged extra for our bags.

The Eurostar to Florence was good, even in second class. We only had one problem (which definitely won't happen to you), someone walked in front of our train and we were delayed for about an hour and a half.
We always use the trains in Europe and find them very good.

Hope you have a wonderful trip