Is it a better Idea to buy our tickets at the station in Rome or from here (the U.S.)? I don't want to buy a return ticket and then either miss the train b/c were aren't back from Pompei yet or have to wait around for a couple of hours b/c we got back to early. We had a bad experience with the TGV in Paris a couple of yrs ago when we bought our tickets at the station. All they had availiable was 2nd class smoking and we HATED it. Though I have heard that the Eurostar in Italy only has Non-Smoking (as of March 2004)?

Also, are there different classes in these trains and if so what is the difference?

Thanks!!!

We took a day trip to Pompeii from Rome and bought our tickets at the station. No problem. In one direction we took the Eurostar. We went second class. We saw the first class cars and they were quieter and more roomy, mostly business people. Second class was fine, though. Make sure you get seat reservations with your tickets; there were people without them who were wandering around trying to find vacant seats.

Coming back from Naples to Rome we took the other fast train, not the Eurostar. I don't recall whether there were different classes on that train, but if there were, we didn't go first class. We had a compartment to ourselves. No seat reservations, if I recall correctly.

You cannot buy a Eurostar ticket without seat reservations - it's automatically part of the ticket price. Buy your tickets to Naples when you get to Rome. You shouldn't have a problem getting tickets back to Rome from Naples as there are many trains to chose from although you might end up on an IC train instead of Eurostar which usually take 1/2 hour longer.

Danimal, it is always possible for a train to sell out. When we were in Rome I tried to buy train tickets for the Eurostar train that I wanted to put my family on for Florence to Venice. It was already sold out, and this was several days in advance.

So if you wait til you see Pompeii and then just show up at the train station, you may still have to wait if the next train is already sold out.

I ended up having to buy tickets for a later train, which I didn't like as much because I had been hoping to arrive in Venice early enough to do a little site-seeing.

Actually there was a post earlier today that all Italian trains would be smoke free by December. If you do a search for GAC (our Italian train expert) you will find all the info for train travel in Italy. There are Eurostar trains from Rome to Naples hourly with many IC,R,D trains also available. The ride is less than 2 hours for Eurostar and IC and about 2 1/2 for the other trains. You can book 1st and 2nd class on Eurostar and IC. I booked Eurostar 2nd class 10 minutes before departure in mid June with no problem.
www.trenitalia.com

Kybourbon: thanks for the compliment. I try to be as helpful as I can whenever I can, knowing how much confusion exists about transportation options in Italy.