I'm trying to book seats for my wife and me online for the Eurostar from Rome to Florence (and back). How do we get two seats together? The system always gives us numbers that do not seem next to each other, for example, 63 and 68.

Perhaps these seat face each other? Is there seat layout map anywhere?

http://downloads.raileurope.com/pdf/...escription.pdf

You'll be on a ETR500. 63 and 68 are aisle seats at face each other.

I'm bewildered by the numbering seat system. I fully get the 1X, 2X, etc for. It's the logic of Y8 & Y4 location that I don't get. Most peculiar. Any explanation rk, or is ours not to question why?

I observed the seat numbering during my trip to Italy 3 years ago, and I wrote in a thread here. I asked if anybody knows about the system, and didn't get an answer. I searched around the web and couldn't find it either.

So, it remains a mystery to me.

Any idea if there is a problem with their payment system? When I try to charge something, I get emails about needed to fax various documents to them to establish my identity.

Thank you for the seating chart.

Don't bother to book ahead online.

There are trains between Rome and Florence at least once an hour, and unless you are traveling at the beginning or end of a long weekend, the trains will not be full.

Buy your tickets when you arrive in Rome. There are ticket machines (with English instructions) at Roma Termini, or you can buy them at a travel agency without a surcharge.

The advantages to booking online are (1) better chance of Amica fare, which is cheaper than the standard, and (2) an online booking discount (5%?).

For what it's worth, this is the body of the email I got when trying to book online:

the transaction has not been authorised by the payment circuit.

You can request authorisation to buy on the site of Trenitalia with your credit card by sending the documentation indicated below, by either fax (06/44104036) or e-mail ([email protected]):
- the content of this email,
- your User ID,
- a contact telephone number,
- the photocopy/scan of a valid identity document of the person associated to the User ID,
- the photocopy/scan of the tax code number

Within 48 hours you will receive the outcome of your request on your e-mail address.

Welcome to the world of trenitalia & credit cards!! There are several long threads here on Fodors about that.

One is called something like "how I successfully booked online using trenitalia.com". I haven't seen one but there's probably another called "1000 ways to fail at trenitalia.com".

I've had good luck using a CitiBank virtual card # you get from their website. Several cc co's offer that. Many people just give up and wait till they get to Italy. Turns out they are just fine doing that.