3 friends and I will be traveling to Rome, Florence and Venice in September. We are staying 3 nights in each city. We want to do side trips to Pompeii and Pisa. If we buy an 8 day rail pass, will it cover the side trips? When should we buy tickets? Since there are 4 of us, are we better off buying 1st or 2nd class tickets? <BR>Thank You

I certaily don't have a definitive answer but for us simply buying point to point tickets was MUCH less expensive than any of the available passes.

If you buy point-to-point tickets, make sure you ask for the mini-group rate which applies to groups of 3 to 5 and entitles groups to 20% discounts on most trains. If you don't ask for the rate, they generally won't give it to you. This is another advantage of point-to-point over railpasses. Also, consider flying into Rome and out of Venice (or vice versa) which will save time and train fare and the airfare may be the same. In your situation, point-to-point probably makes more sense.

We bought Italy rail passes but immediately realized we didn't need them... it was so easy to get around by train and bus that we didn't really need a rental car either. Also you can often buy train tickets from machines that have English menus to guide you through the process.

In some countries, particularly Switzerland the passes are great as you just hop on or off trains at will, but we found that in Italy practically every train we wanted to take required a supplement and/or reservation, so we still needed to go stand in line and pay the extra. The worst thing was that at the counters, half the clerks seemed to really overcharged us. The worst was paying nearly $40 each extra for the supplement from Bologna to Florence, which is practically the price of a first class ticket to begin with. I think you'd be wise to just buy point to point for what you are doing, especially if you want to take the Eurostar trains (and I would recommend that) between your three major cities.

We bought a kilometric pass, allows up to 5 people to travel up to 3,000 kilometers. Cost was $120 for 2nd class. Just buy it there at any train station. You can check the italian rail site for cost of point-to-point tickets vs. this pass, but I would think that an 8-day pass that you mentioned would be lots more expensive than either of my two suggestions.

Check out Rick Steve's website at www.ricksteves.com. He offers a railpass worksheet for figuring out which pass (or point to point tix) is best based on your itinerary.