Best way to get from Rome to Milan?
 

Our frequent flyer tickets are requiring us to fly out of Milan...but we'll be in Rome at the end of our trip. Our flight home leaves MXP at 2:35 pm. What's the best, most efficient way for us to get to Milan...and should we go late Saturday night or will going early Sunday morning be okay?

The best and most efficient way to get to Milan Malpensa is a private jet; however, normal folks would take trains :-)

Plug in Roma - Malpensa Aeroporto into www.trenitalia.com to see the options. You change train at Milano Centrale. If your travel dates are months ahead, just use the same day of the week next week. The train schedule does't change that much.

You have to back compute from the time you need to be at the airport minus the nominal trip time ~4:23 (Sunday) to determine when you need to leave Roma. On Sunday, I think you have only one train that would make it. But see it for yourself.

So if everything runs normally, then you can probably make it. What is your plan B if they don't? No one can tell you the impact of foul up with each scenario on you. You have to decide how much risk you care to take.

If you decide not to take risk of traveling on Sunday, do you have to make Milan stay an unproductive one? Is there anything in Milan or near Milan you care to visit? If you are visiting Northern Italy and can resequence your itinerary, you can naturally end up in Milan without any of the trade-offs you mentioned.

I had a similar situation-- I took the train Termini-Milan the day before, bus to the airport (took bus right outside the train station), and then took the airport shuttle to an airport hotel (Holiday Inn nearby). It sounds much more complicated than it was. A better option was to take the train to Milan, stay overnight in Milan and take the early bus to the airport. However, we had a 9am flight so we had to stay closer to the airport.

When I did this last booking.com the Boscolo or other
nice eurocheapo.com/milan hotel.Ambasciatoriisanother one I like in anice area close to the Duomo worth a visit.seat61.com/italy always train up night B4 would never risk a long train day of. skyscanner.net flight quickest usually more have done this in the past though stayed at the Novotel MXP $80 ok not great free shuttle but not much to do.
So train up day B4 for me.

I once took a ES* train from Rome Termini to Milan Centrale in a weekday morning. The train stopped midway for reasons unbeknownst to me, ending up 40 minutes late when pulling into Milan Centrale. So you'll need to build in extra time in case the train is late in arriving Milan.

Both Easyjet and Alitalia fly from Rome Fiumicino to Malpensa. The alternative is to take the Eurostar from Rome to Milano Centrale - leaves 7.15 and arrives at 10.40 and then take either the bus from the station or the Malpensa Express (from Centrale and not Milano Cadorna).