Going to Italy in Sept and wanted to travel from Venice to Florence early in the morning. Trains leave late, plane schedules are worse or don't exist. Is a rental car the only way to arrive in Florence by noon?

There's a 7:20 something train that gets to Florence around 11:30. Don;t know why there aren't more early trains - but that seems to be it unless you want to leave the night before.

Trenitalia shows a 4am train arriving in Florence at 7. the next train is at 1:30 and arrives at 4:30. I thought there would be many trains running frequently!

I did the same trek about a year and a half ago from Venice to Florence. There are some advantages to the 7a.m. train. The first is that most hotels have a noon check out anyway so why not get started early? Another advantage was that it was quite easy to get to the train staion that early in the morning before the mid afternoon rush and by the time you get to Florence you will be ready for a great meal. The Euro star was about 3.5 hours; direct from Venice to Florence.
Best of luck, Fluffy

I think Trenitalia has a problem with loading the schedules on some routes lately, especially from Venice. There should be trains departing hourly, but for some reason aren't showing. Wait until mid-summer to look at schedules ( you can't book on Trenitalia more than 60 days in advance). Some schedules are only being loaded within 30 days of departure.

Thanks Kybourbon, I think there is a problem with the site. Tomorrow's sched looks normal, but Aug-Sept isn't right - it also took me three tries to register. I'll try again 60 days before as you suggest.

Are you looking at Sept. on the trenitalia site? If so, that's too far out to get a good schedule. Try looking at the day of the week you will be traveling (Monday, Thurs., etc.)in June. I looked at a Friday in June and there were plenty of early morning trains: 6:32, 7:22, 8:07, 8:13, 8:21, etc. I have taken the 6:32 train to Florence from Venice in the past. I needed to be in Florence before noon. Worked just fine for me.

Thanks. I was looking at Sept and it's too far off. I'll try again in July. Too bad trenitalia's website doesn't tell you this, but at least now I know that there will be morning trains.

This past October we took a 6:30 a.m. Eurostar from Venice to Florence.We arrived at approximately 9:30 a.m.in Florence. We had a full day in Florence.

Great question - exactly what I was wondering myself. I'm taking the train on 15 June from Venice to Florence and all I've been able to find on the Trenitalia site is the 1.30 departure.

Can anyone tell me - do you have to buy tickets ahead of time or can you just go to the counter and get them before departure?

Hi cw,

You can usually buy your tickets the day of, but in high season or on weekends and holidays it's a good idea to get them at least a few days in advance.

If you buy tickets ahead of time online, can you reserve specific seats online too? How does this work?

It seems most of the complaints about missing schedules are on the Venice/Florence route. If you enter a date next week, you can get the schedule for all day. Someone mentioned on another thread that all schedules were supposed to be loaded by May 15.

Yes, you can select seats or you can enter number of tickets and Trenitalia will select your seats. Do a "walk-thru" by putting in cities/dates for next week, select a fare (standard - there aren't any specials on Venice/Florence route right now) and then you will see the seat diagrams you can select.

This post was so helpful to me!! I didn't realize that the schedule wouldn't show all trains in october this far in advance. I thought my only option for late morning/early afternoon was the 1:30 train, so I was concerned that it would sell out quickly and we'd have to wait until 4:30. Thanks for this info!

A few things to think of:

1. you might want to stay a bit flexible as to when you think you might be leaving Venice. I usually book my train a day or two before I leave.

2. Mestre is the land based train station and St. Lucia (VE S.L. in Trenitaila speak) is the island based train station. It works out better if you book in Venice as you can get a local train and transfer in Mestre for your trip to Florence.

3. For Florence the main train station is (again in Trenitalia speak) Fl.SMN. Not all trains go there.

I am having the same problem finding the morning train from Venice to Florence for June 16. We also want to be in Florence by noon. Trenitalia does not show the 7am train. June 16 is a Saturday. Is it possible that there is no early Saturday train to Florence? We can rent a car if all else fails, but would prefer to take the 7ish train.

Can anyone confirm that there is a Saturday morning train from Venice to Florence on June 16? The concierge at our hotel is checking for me but I haven't heard back from him yet. I'd like to book our reservations for Galleria dell'Accademia, but cannot until I know what time we will arrive.

Marcia --

I just looked on the train site -- http://www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html

They show a Eurostar leaving Venice at 6:38 am, which arrives into Florence at 9:23 am.

Train times Venice S.L -Florence are:

06.32 (- arr. 09.23) ES

07.22 (- arr. 1045) IC/ES Change at Bologna

08.07 (- arr. 11.23) N.B Change at Mestre (dep 08.44)

Hope this helps ...

Steve

hi, centralparkgirl,

a good place to check is the german rail site - it covers all of europe and i often use it for UK trains rather than the idoits we've got here.

find it on www.bahn.de

regards, ann

Thank you! I don't know what I was doing wrong. I checked this morning and there appeared to show only 2 trains that day, one at 1:30 and another later than that.

Meanwhile I did try Venice to Bologna/ Bologna to Florence which arrives at 10:07 which is good, but the 6:32 is even better. Thanks so much.