We are planning to travel by train Nice to Genoa and return at the beginning of June. I had thought to hold off buying the tickets to keep our options open. Another reason for delaying is to try to get seats on the sea-view-side of the car. However, when I went to www.sncf.fr to check if there any cheap tickets, the availability of seats seems pretty limited. We are traveling to Genoa on June 1 and returning June 5. Might there be a problem getting seats? Can the problem just be with the sncf site?

Marianne

There are FREQUENT departures from Nice to Genoa throughout the day, either requiring one change or no changes at all.

I honestly cannot imagine why you would need to reserve a seat in advance for this trip and if you do you could certainly do it after you get to France.

Some of the services, in fact the large majority of them, are on regional trains; a few are on EuroCity services.

If you board early enough I would think you could easily find seats on the side of the train you want IF, and this is a big "if" the rolling stock is configured with seats on BOTH sides of each car rather than on just one. If it is the latter and the seats are facing "inland"..well...

For what it's worth, we once had reserved first class seats for the Nice to Genoa trip, but we had to stand all the way. Why? Because the train was coming from Barcelona and was filled with about ten thousand drunk and screaming soccer fans from Genoa and Milan who were returning from a big game in Barcelona. No conductor was interested in finding us a place to sit; we were lucky to wedge our way into the first class cars at all.

As Intrepid1 says, there are lots of trains between Nice and Genova. Very approximately, French trains run every half hour from Nice to Ventimiglia, and Italian trains run hourly from Ventimiglia to Genova. There are a few through trains, but reservations are optional on these.

I hate to make you nervous, but we took this trip last August, and there weren't many empty seats. Since June is a busy time, I'd book ahead. By the way, we had seats on the right-hand side of the train, and had a seaview nearly the entire way to Genoa.

Personally, had I gotten onto a train with the screaming soccer fans I would have gotten off at the next station and WAITED for a quieter train!

Oh, but Intrepid, if we had done that we would have missed the most "exciting" train ride of our lives.