We'd like to travel on an overnight train from Venice to Paris and have been trying to buy tickets online from Trenitalia but keeps saying that it's not available at the moment. Weird thing is that there's an error only for the particular day that we want.

From reading the posts here, I also tried booking from SNCF. I'm a resident of the US and when I use that as my delivery location it sends me to rail europe, which is highway robbery!!

Can I use Italy as my delivery/pick-up location?

Thanks.

Hi H,

You can have SNCF mail your tickets to you in Italy.

PS,

Have you considered flying from Venice VCE to Paris ORY on www.myair.com?

Leaving the country as "Netherlands", I have used SNCF to buy tickets *from* Amsterdam to Paris, and could print them on my own printer (b/c they were discounted tickets and non-refundable).

I have *not* used it to buy full-fare tickets b/c I am not sure if it will give a choice to pick up in the orig. country. The only other option for full-fare is to mail the tickets - perhaps they could be sent to your hotel?

...assuming you leave the country as "Italy" for your case.

The French railroad system isn't going to deliver tickets to you in the US any more than Amtrak will deliver them to people in Ukraine. If you insist on that, then you do have to use Raileurope. You can use any place you choose for pickup if you intend to really pick them up there, of course.

Thanks for the suggestions.

It would be ideal if I can pick up the tickets from the train station in Italy or print them out from home.

Ira, I checked out myair, and there are two rates, $19 and $109 for the same flight. Is that normal? I'll look into it some more.

HI H,

> I checked out myair, and there are two rates, $19 and $109 for the same flight. Is that normal?

Yup.

Sometimes the rates go down to zero.

You have to add taxes, though - about 55E.

Anyway, it's cheaper and faster than the train.

There are limits on how much baggage you can bring without incurring extra charges.

Hi H,

>It would be ideal if I can pick up the tickets from the train station in Italy or print them out from home.<

You can only print PREMS fares from home.

What's wrong with having them mailed to your hotel?

Christina,

German Rail mails tickets to the U.S. so SNCF could do it too. Also, French Rail mails tickets to just about anyplace else in the world except the U.S. (and Canada?)

Guess who the major owner of RailEurope is? French Rail!! So, French Rail IS deliberately not mailing tickets to the U.S. to preserve business for their overpriced subsidiary.

I once wrote to SNCF and asked why they don't mail tickets to the U.S. Their answer was, get them from RailEurope.

Ira,

Flying to Paris from Venice definitely looks more promising even with the added airport transfers which I have to do more research on.

Have you had any recent Myair experience? I went over to the Tripadvisor board and the few people who have used myair have experienced major delays. The discussions were back in 2005 and 2006. I also saw several Ryanair recommendations despite the fact that they fly from Treviso to Beauvais, which are about an hour away from Venice and Paris, respectively.

To answer your question, having the train tix delivered to our hotel is also an option.

Thanks.

Hi H,

No recent experience w/myair.

Re delays, etc - this is a problem with all discount airlines.

The reason I suggest Myair over RyanAir is that it is easier to get to/from the airports, although friends recently did RyanAir for this trip and said that it wasn't too bad.

Hi Ira,

After reading some more posts over at tripadvisor, vueling seems to be highly recommended. So after checking their website, they are offering a new route in May from VCE to CDG for 40E.

Thanks for suggesting that we fly instead, after reading more about overnight trains, I don't think we'd like the experience.

Hi H,

That's a good fare.

Enjoy your visit.