Last minute trip 9 days on a budget Help!
 

A surprise birthday gift of two tickets to Italy has me begging you all for help with the itinerary, because 7 of the 9 days are during Holy Week. The "must sees" are Pompeii and Matera. (My friend wants to see Pompeii; I don't especially, but am compromising. would love to see Paestum, as well. The budget is that of two backpackers, although we are both in our late 60s. I am very fit as I don't have an auto, so must walk all winter and use my bicycle for all transportation and recreation year round. We will have a Eurailpass for 4 days. ETA Rome at 9 am on the 22nd y. My thinking is to train to Naples and then down the coast to Pompei. The ruins on the next day. Or would it be better to go to Paestum right away and the next afternoon begin working up the coast by bus?

Or should we skip Paestum and just enjoy a couple of nights on the coast, after visiting Pompeii on Wednesday? That would mean Matera on Saturday, if you think the bus would be running on Sunday.

Or Pompeii Wednesday, overnight Naples, Matera Thursday returning Friday, with a night in a town on the coast, Naples on Saturday and Easter, Easter Monday free. Rome the next 2 days.

Can we take a chance on finding last minute lodging without reservations that week? I say no; my friend says yes.

Is there a forum I could look for about transportation, because of the holidays?

I hope you can help us with suggestions. Obviously I don't know distances. Thank you very much.

Have you already purchased the Eurail pass? If not, I think you may be better off in Italy doing point to point instead of the pass. Work out your itinerary, then check cost of local trains.

Not sure what you consider a backpacker's budget. If you give a specific, total dollar amount you have available, you can get better, more accurate advice.

While you might be able to find last minute lodging, doing so will eat up time during the trip that you could be using for sightseeing. As you won't want to waste time during the trip doing research, it is likely that you will end up spending more or getting places of lower quality or poor location. It is much better to have that all sorted before the trip.

IMHO, for all you want to see, and on what may be a tight budget, it is best to have everything in the way of lodging and transportation pretty much decided.

Unless Eurail pass was a freebie gift to you, a pass is counter productive if you are on budget. Use www.trenitalia.com to probe advance and last-minutes ticket prices.

Slow trains. Fares, even at the last minutes are so cheap. A pass never pays itself on these trains.
Fast train. Require reservation with fee with a pass. You cannot hop on/off. If you bought advanced fare, you can get one with seat reservation not too much more than the cost of a seat reservation.

For example, even the last minutes fast train Rome-Napoli-Paestum is about €50 including a seat reservation. If you do advance fare using fast train, you can get about €25 or €11 with slower IC train. You can easily see just how difficult to make the pass worthwhile in Italy.

Accommodations during Easter without reservation? If you are not picky in terms of accommodation or the price or time to find one, yes you can do it. I supposed you can make a bet with your optimistic friend:-) Set a target price based on non last minutes price. If within certain time, all you can find are accommodations above the target price range, your friend pays the excess. If you find an accommodation below the target, your friend get to keep the savings.

You can check the distances using www.google.com/maps

>>We will have a Eurailpass for 4 days.<< As the others say -- I hope the 'will' means you haven't yet purchased Eurail Passes. They would certainly eat into your budget (unless they were a gift you didn't pay for)

What is your nightly budget for accommodations?

Thank you for your replies. We won't buy the rail pass. Are last minute tickets cheaper or more expensive?

As far as accommodations, we are thinking hostels. Maximum $45 each. I need to get the reservations ASAP. I just need no booking fees and no cancellation fees. I need opinions on which is the better idea: stay in Naples the first night and take a local bus or train to Pompeiito then keep going south for a few days? Or take the train from Rome to Paestum and hop on and off the bus going back to Naples over a couple of days? My opinion is we would save money and have more time starting in Paestum and going north, rather than day trips from a town along the coast. I vote for Paestum.

Should we stay in Paestum or Salerno?

Do you have suggestions for towns we should see and/or try to sleep in?

Thank you, again.

There is always somewhere cheap to stay in Naples. Try Hostel of the Sun or Hotel Zara.
Going to Paestum - there are regional trains from Naples and the archaeological site is a nice walk from the station. Just watch the train schedules as they are intermittent. I've only ever driven to Paestum so can't advise you in great detail (the Trip Advisor forums have people who know loads more than me about the trains around Campania).
Salerno is a very underrated city and IMHO really worth a look. It was pretty hammered in WW2 but the historic centre and waterfront are lovely places.

http://www.hostelnapoli.com/en/

http://www.hotelzara.it/en/

Couple of other budget suggestions

http://www.hoteltoledo.net/

http://www.palepoli.com/language/en/

All are within the tourist precincts of the Historic Centre and Spanish Quarter. Hotel Zara is very close to Napoli Centrale - a noisy and somewhat unattractive neighbourhood but very convenient to the train if you want to go to Pompeii. My other suggestions are 2-3 metro stops from Centrale on Metro Line 1.

I am unclear from your post if you also want to see something of the Amalfi coast.

If it were me, unless you are very keen on spendng nights in Naples, I would look for a place to stay in Salerno. It is usually very cheap, and if Pompei and Paestum are high on the agenda for sightseeing, it is a very convenient base for both. You can also easily see the Amalfi coast from there, although I am unsure of ferry prices and buses might be crowded during Holy Week. It is also a short trip to Naples if you want see the archeological museum and do sightseeing there.

I think the fastest way to and from Matera is the bus from Napoli. Leaving Rome, you might consider going to Materia first (train to Napoli, switch to bus), and then finishing up on the coast.

I've only been to Basilicata and Salerno with a car, so others may have better answers for you.

This is what we dcided, based on the suggestions above and a look at the weather forecast which predicts rain the first 2 days of our trip. Train from Rome to Naples, a cheap hostel near the station, Catch the bus to Matera and return the next evening to stay in either Sorrento or Salerno. It wasn't easy finding the button for the English version of the bus schedule or trying to figure out where the bus station is.

The Artecard is what we'll be using to travel to the attractions and towns along the coast. That is an amazing find for low income travelers. 3 days of unlimited travel, even on the local trains!

Thanks for your help. Hope your adventures will be as wonderful as ours already are.

I think I might have taken the train to Ferrandina and then bus the last bit, just because the views from the train can be pretty good. But the bus will be fine. Though, you are entering a more "southern Italy" state of mind area. :-)

Keep your wits about you at Napoli station, nothing nasty but just keep bags zipped up and wallets out of sight.

Holy Week, which is the week before Easter, sees no unusual tourist activity. However, the week after Easter is really the beginning of the tourist season. Lots of kids have school holidays and since Monday is a holiday, people often take a few more days off, or even the whole week, to make the most of it.


This year, though, Easter is early, and since the weather is a bit iffy in late March, I would expect the effect to be attenuated.

Last-minute train tickets for the fast trains almost always cost more, because the discounted tickets usually sell out well in advance. You can often find some remaining discounts near the travel date, especially if you travel very early in the day or at other unpopular hours, such as over lunch time. However, the discounted tickets <b> must </b> be bought before midnight of the second day prior to your trip. In other words, if you want to travel on a Friday, the remaining discounts are available only until midnight on Wednesday. If you buy the tickets later than that, you'll pay full price.

The regional trains, such as the trains to Paestum, always cost the same, and have no reserved seats. It's best to buy these at a train station (any train station). Since they're not for a specific train, they have to be stamped in a little machine near the platform just before boarding the train, to establish the time of travel and prevent them from being reused.

The official train reservation websites are http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en and http://www.italotreno.it/?sc_lang=en . (Italo doesn't serve all routes, and never the routes used only by regional trains.) You have to use the Italian names of the cities (Roma, Napoli). When buying tickets, always specify the time of day as well as the date. If you're not sure, put a very early hour so that you see all trains for the day.

Two people traveling together can often save money by using the overseas agent for Trenitalia, www.italiarail.com . They don't have a great exchange rate, but if there's only one discounted ticket left, they'll sell you the one discounted ticket plus one full-price ticket. Trenitalia (and Italo) won't show discounted prices unless there are enough of those tickets for the whole group. I would check all three sites to find the best prices, remembering that Trenitalia and Italo show prices in euros while Italiarail shows prices in dollars, so you have to convert them to euros be able to compare prices.

Bvlenci, I needed that train information. Appreciate it. Thank you.