How do you make Italian Train Reservations?
 

I have been reading that to take the Eurostar in Italy, you need reservations. Is there an easy way to book them if you already have purchased an Italy Rail Pass?

Mike, The Eurostar is a high speed train between London/Paris and London/Brussels. For train reservations in Italy, you book them with the agent in the station and there should be no surcharge. However, for the ETR "Pendolino" I think there is a surcharge.

You can make reservations for most trains in Italy through raileruope here in the states (even if you already have a pass!). Their web site is www.raileurope.com. There is, in fact, a Eurostar train Italy and it runs from Rome to Florence to Venice with stops in between and you do need reservations for the train. We just got back from Italy and I would highly recommend paying the extra money and getting the reservations in the states. We had reservations for all of our trains except one from Venice to Salzburg and it was a royal pain to get them. we had to stand on four different lines in the Florence train station and the whole process took us almost an hour (many people we encountered thought we were crazy becuase they had made several trips and waited hours!) The Eurostar is a very nice train and it makes the trip must faster-- I would definitely recommend it! have a good trip and if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to e-mail! Hans

Mike, Sorry for the outdated info and thanks to Hans for correcting my error. It's been too long since I've been to Italy, I need to go back and be brought up to speed.

Mike- <BR> <BR>The best way to make reservations may depend on when you are going to be in Italy. We were there in May and while we didn't have a rail pass, we did buy point-to-point tickets in each city. We never ran into long lines to either buy tickets or make reservations. Making reservations in Venice only took us about 10 minutes. For us, it wasn't worth the extra money to make reservations from the US.

Cheryl has a good point-- the lines in Venice were much shorter than they were in Florence. The other thing to consider is how many trains travel where you want to go in a day and how important is it to catch a particular train. There is only one direct train a day (with only 2 cars) from Venice to Salzburg and we had to be in Salzburg on a particular day--hence the need for reservations. If you are flexible and there are multiple trains going to your destinations--it may make sense to save the money (although it is not too expensive to make the reservations) and, more importantly, remain flexible, and wait until you get there to make your reservations. As far as i know, only the Eurostar's require reservations although if you want to travel 1st class over longer distances I think it might make sense to make the reservations for those trains as well as the 1st class cabins were surprisingly crowded.