A friend of mine will be in Italy and France in the autumn and would love to be able to ship luggage from place to place to avoid schlepping it on trains. Any suggestions?

Tell the friend to take HALF of what they are planning to take. Otherwise any "beast of burden" schlepping angst will be of their own making, and noone else's.

Hi underhill,

Singletail might not have put it tactfully, but he is right.

It is very expensive to have luggage shipped.

They will be taking what they need. Anyone have suggestions more pertinent to the topic?

In which case, unless they are very elderly or handicapped, they can take their luggage on the train.

Ira,

One of them is indeed elderly. the concern is handling luggage with the various security measures now in place on some European trains as well as the freedom from worrying about luggage in between hotels. I'm sure it would cost a pile of Euros, but shipping the luggage is what they would like to do.

The friends are seasoned travelers and know about packing light; this year is just an unusual situation for them.

I would be concerned that the luggage might not catch up with them from place to place. I wouldn't do this unless I had a small bag containing what I needed for overnight in case the bags go wrong. By the time I prepared such a bag, I would have a bag almost the same size as my regular compact suitcase.

I suppose you could do this by FedEx. . . but I suspect that by the time you paid the fees, you could have rented a car for the trips or arranged for an escort on the train to move your luggage.

The other possibility--two suitcases--
=Suitcase A is with you in City 1. Ship Suitcase B immediately to City 2.
=Before leaving for City 2, ship Suitcase A to City 3.
=Use Suitcase B in City 2; then ship to City 4.
=Use Suitcase A in City 3; then ship to City 5.
Pretty crazy, huh? But this allows more time for the luggage to make the connections.

Tell your friend to bring just the necessity..She can wear the same clothes in different cities and nobody will notice it..

My daughter and I made the mistake last year to bring more than was necessary..After wrestling the extra baggage from train to train, we decided when we were at Cinque Terre, to ship back home half of our belonging...

It cost us more than 60 dollars, but believe me it was worth every pennies..

We learned a good lesson anyway...

Hi underhill,

ellenem has an answer to the biggest problem.

There is no guarantee that their luggage will actually be in the same place they are.

What is the itinerary? Perhaps they could fly.