My wife and I will be stopping in Italy for 4 days on our way home from school. We will be spending the first coupke of days in Rome and the rest in Venice. We will be flying into Rome and flying out of Milan.<BR><BR>The problem is with our luggage, we will have 4 suitcases to take care of. Our original plan was to leave the luggage in our hotel room in rome, and then take it with us on the train to venice and then leave in the hotel in venice, until we go leave for Milan.<BR><BR>A friend of mine told me, however, that there is now way I can bring 4 suitcases with me on the train from rome to venice. <BR>Is this true? I thought that maybe there was a luggage car or cargo area of some kind. As I have never taken the train before I am clueless.<BR><BR>Also, will the same problem exist on the train from venice to milan.<BR><BR>Thank you!

My advice would be to travel with as little as possible if you have to go by train. It really isn't easy to deal with luggage for several reasons.<BR>Most train stations in Europe involve carrying suitcases up and down staircases. There are rarely porters to help you until you get to the actual track. Although porters will help load, there may be nobody around to help when you get off the train.<BR>On the train itself, there is minimal space for storing luggage. And the trains between the big cities are often extremely crowded, so you may have even less space than you anticipated.<BR>Last year, on a train from Venice to Milan, because there was no room near our seats, we had to store our luggage just outside the bathrooms. Then we had to constantly check it between stops and when the doors opened at stops.<BR>Sorry to paint such a nightmare scenario, but you will not enjoy lugging 4 pieces of luggage on the train. If you really have to bring so much, I'd definitely suggest flying!

That is a HUGE amount of luggage and will be next to impossible to manage on trains or in small hotel rooms. But your first sentence indicates you are going home after an extended stay which may explain that much luggage.<BR><BR>My suggestion - ship or mail some of your stuff home ahead of time. For 4 days you would only need a couple of backpacks or a rollaboard.<BR>

Hello,<BR><BR>My wife and I took a transatlantic cruise followed by six weeks in Italy/Germany two years ago.<BR><BR>We mailed half of our luggage back to the U.S. upon arrival in Rome from the cruise. We still ended up with two suitcases and two roller-boards.<BR><BR>Although it was a minor pain in the train stations and the Vaporetto in Venice, we had no difficulty finding a home for our luggage on the trains.<BR><BR>Would I have preferred to travel lighter? Yes. If you and your wife can carry the luggage up stairs and for a distance of a quarter mile without great difficulty you should be ok.<BR><BR>Have a great trip.

Hi <BR>One note for Venice, most people end up taking a Vaporetto (water bus) to their hotel location if staying in Venice. Imagine taking all that luggage on a commericial city bus. These are mostly open air and I did not see any luggage storing areas. We limited it to one bag per person and that was plenty to handle. The mailing aspect sounds good.