explore2012

My husband and I will be traveling in mid-May to France and Italy. We will be there for 14 nights. Here is the plan:
Paris: 3 nights, leave for Nice (by train)
Nice: 2 nights, leave for Italy (Cinque Terre) (train)
Cinque Terre: 2 nights, leave for Florence (train)
Florence: 2 nights, leave for Venice (train)
Venice: 1.5 days (leave for Rome on the evening train)
Rome: arrive in Rome in the morning and stay 1 night, leave the next day for home!

If we are on a budget and want to travel by train, what's the best way to 1. buy the train tickets or pass; 2. What type of ticket/pas should we buy? (I've heard of buying point-to-point tickets or a France-Italy Pass). Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!

thursdaysd

See http://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-travel.htm (ignore the "from England" bits).

It will almost certainly be cheapest to buy point-to-point tickets from the national railway websites, and seat61 will tell you how. If you want info on passes start at http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/rail_menu.htm

StCirq

Looks extremely rushed, with NO time in some major places like Venice and Rome. Why are you even bothering with Rome and Venice? You don't need a pass, but you do need to rethink the whole trip.

nytraveler

Agree that this trip is a disaster in the making - unless you have already seen a lot in Venice and Rome. IMHO you have a great tour of train stations but will see mch more of them than you will of major tourist sights.

In th etime you hae I would do no more than 4 hotels/cities - and even that is giving short shrfit to Paris and Rome.

It's your life - and you can obviously do as you want - but you couldn;t pay me to rush around like this - bouncing from one place to another after only a few hours of sights.

StCirq

By the way, if you're on a budget, moving around this much is a real money-eater, besides all the other reasons for not doing it. Staying put and actually getting to see things and enjoy where you are saves a LOT of money.

cls2paris

Check Trenitalia (the Italian rail site) for the Mini fares, you book ahead of time for the day/time but the fares are sometimes much cheaper. www.trenitalia.com You will see a link for English. There are similar promotions on the French rail site www.sncf.com. You've already been given good sites for research above. You need to account for the travel time on the train. For example, I did a quick check and Paris to Nice looks to be 6-7 hours. Nice to Vernazza looks to be between 5.5 hours and 7 hours depending on the departure/route/train. Vernazza to Florence is between 3 and 4 hours. Plus factor in the time to get to/from the station and hotel. So spending 2 nights really only gets you a little more than a day for that town. You might want to consider skipping Florence and Venice and just go from Vernazza to Rome. I would do a bit more research on the train schedules and see what makes sense to leave off this time.