sandjd

My husband and I want to have a holiday in Italy in March/April - possibly spending up to four weeks away from home. We live in Maine, but we want to spend up to a week of our holiday in the UK with my family there (near London). We'd like to visit Pompeii, Rome and Florence and the Italian lakes while we are in Italy, and possibly stop a day or so in Switzerland. We want to travel as much as possible by train and wonder whether a three-country Saverpass would be best (I am 56 and my husband is 63 and neither of us speaks Italian.)

Is it possible to get a flight from Boston to London, take the train down to Italy and fly back from Rome to Boston (or fly to Rome, take the train back to London and fly back to the US from there), or is that going to be very expensive? Can anybody suggest a better alternative?

All suggestions gratefully received.

Cicerone

I will answer the easy questions first.

Not speaking Italian will be no issue for you.

It would be possible to arrange your airline ticket from the US so that you fly into London and out of Rome or Florence. This will save you the time and effort of having to get back to London. This is called an "open jaw" ticket and usually does not cost any more, and sometimes costs less, than flying into and out of the same city. You may also want to ask if you can get a London-Italy flight included in your US international ticket, if you are flying a carrier like Alitalia or British Air, they may include a stopover in London as part of a US-Italy-US flight.

Easter in 2006 is April 16, so you will find prices higher and hotel rooms scarcer as you get closer to that date, esp in Rome. If you have any flexibility, if you can move your trip to after Easter (and actually to late May) you will find better prices . Late May is a good time as school is not out so you miss the big crowds, temps are not hot, winter is over in most of Europe and spring flowers are out. Take a look at weatherbase.com for historical temps and rainfall.

March/April is not great for the Italian lakes, it is still quite cool there, many restaurants and hotels are still closed, I am not sure about the ferry schedule it might be quite limited at that time which makes touring around difficult. Also nothgint will be in bloom which makes visiting a place like the gardens at Villa Balbianello quite disappointing I would imagine. I personally don't think March/April is great for the Naples area (Pompeii), but if you aren't planning on doing any sunbathing or swimming and are dressed for the weather then the coast is still very pretty.

March/April is not good for Switzerland either, unless you limit yourself to the non-mountain areas. There will be rain/fog at that time in the mountains as the winter is over and spring has not really arrived. I would actually skip Switzerland during those months as it deserves a longer time than one day and deserves to be seen when it is at is bests, which is really any time other than late October through early December and then mid-March through early to mid May.

With 3 weeks, I would concentrate on Florence and the Tuscany area and Rome and the surrounding area, with some time in Pompeii and Naples if you are OK with cool and rainy weather at a beach area. You could also include Venice.

OK for trains. It is possible to take a train from the UK to Italy. This however would be a long trip. From London to Rome by the fastest train would be 18 hours, and require a minimum of 2 changes, the first in Paris (you would take the Euro star train from London to Paris via the Channel Tunnel). The trip would be very interesting in terms of scenery, of course some of this will have to be at night; I am not a huge fan of night trains as I find even first class sleepers not to be comfortable; however there are others on this board who like them. You could break this up by a few days in Paris, and/or possibly a few days in the Geneva, and a few days in Milan.

If you aren't interested in France and really want to concentrate on Italy, I think your better option is to fly. The flight time from London to Rome is 2.5 hours non-stop.

You may need a crystal ball to figure out which is cheaper, flying our some kind of train pass. With some sort of Eurail Pass, which should be good for the UK – Italy portion and for travel within Italy, the train probably is cheaper, esp as you will want a pass in Italy anyway. If the price difference between a pass just for Italy and the pass which will allow you to go from the UK to Italy is less than the price of any airfare, then the train is cheaper (assuming you want to comit to at least 18 hours on a train.) A place to start would be the Rail Europe site at http://www.raileurope.com/us/index.htm.I don't know that I would buy my tickets from them, as I believe their surcharges are higher than if you bought a ticket directly from the UK or Italian train authorities. The website for the Italian train authority is treinitalia.com.

There are discount airlines which fly between the UK and Italy, in addition to Alitalia and British Air, so you probably can fly quite cheaply. For info on discount carriers, take a look at http://www.discountairfares.com/lcosteur.htm
and http://www.thissen.net/lowcost.html

A site I use a lot just because it is so easy to use is the website for the Swiss Rail system at rail.ch. It has schedules for trains all over Europe. You cannot get fares for any trips except those entirely within Switzerland, but it is useful for plotting schedules and seeing how long a trip will take.

Intrepid1

For discount air carriers Italy-UK also look at www.whichbudget.com

For rail travel to/from UK to Italy look at www.seat61.com; using the left-handed sidebar click on "Italy."

GeoffHamer

Using high-speed trains, it is possible to travel between Italy and London in a long day, but it's much better to break the journey somewhere or to travel overnight. From London, for example, you can take a morning Eurostar to Paris, have lunch there, spend an afternoon sightseeing, then take a sleeper to Italy so you arrive in Venezia, Firenze, Roma or wherever in the morning. Another option would be to take an afternoon TGV from Paris to Lake Geneva and stay a night in Lausanne before continuing the next day. Since trains go to thousands of places, the possibilities are almost infinite. It may not be the cheapest way of travelling, but it can be very interesting.

Cicerone

I completely agree that train travel is the way to go if you are willing to commit to the time and possibly pay a bit more (including hotels, avoiding night trains if possible). Great scenery, very nice trains for the most part, I would opt for first class for even more room, less crowded cars. Reserve a table in the dining car and really enjoy the experience. If this were MY trip in March/April, I would do the following (based on flying out of a city in Rome for the US):

1. London to Paris via Euro star. 2-3 nights. A few day sin Paris. There is always something you haven't' seen yet or want to see again. No crowds at this time, and cooler weather justifies spending more time in museums.

2. Paris to Lausanne/Vevey (4 + hours). 1-2 nights here. Although not at its best this time of year, a day or so in Vevey or another of the little towns along the lake is certainly time well spent resting between train trips, you can see the Castle at Chillon, go to wine tasting tours and there are some museums if the weather does not cooperate. If it does, there is the marvelous views across the lake to the Alps and some great walks as well. Ferries will not be running but for 1-2 days you can work around this.

3. Lausanne/Milan (3 -4 hours, the super fast Cisalpino can get you there in 3 hours with no changes). 1 -2 nights. A great place for 1 or 2 days at that time of year, as so many sights here are indoors. The Last Supper is just the tip of the iceberg here. You should find good hotel rates, esp. if you can time your visit over a weekend.

From Milan you can get to Florence in 3 hours or Rome in 7 hours.

You would then have two weeks or a bit more for Italy. If you wanted more time, you could skip Switzerland and go Paris to Milan in about 8.5 hours.

flanneruk

You've asked about getting the train to Italy, stopping off for a few days in Switzerland. .

There are frequent high-speed trains from London to Geneva (though they crawl the first few miles in England and the last few in France) with simple connections at Lille-Europe and Lyons-Part Dieu. The 0839 from Waterloo for example gets you to Geneva at 1719. Go to the sncf site and pump in your details at the journey planner. Ignore the results it throws up, press the "modifier souhaits" button on the results page, press the "trajet par" button and select Lille.

Left to itself, the site keeps on showing you tedious cross-Paris connections. Fine if you want to stop for lunch on the way (Haute cuisine isn't a speciality of France's high speed trains), but still a pain with luggage.

sandjd

Thank you so much, folks, for your most constructive and helpful suggestions. I've printed them off to read them at leisure and think about them. I also realised that Ryanair do a one-way flight from Luton (not far from where my daughter lives in England) to Ciampino for £30 each. It may be feasible to buy a return ticket to LHR and a one-way flight to Ciampino, and get the train back (I don't have a problem with overnight sleepers). However, I need to get quotes for the open-jaw flight to make a proper comparison. Thanks again - I am overwhelmed by your helpfulness.

WillTravel

EasyJet also does Ciampino to Gatwick or Stansted. Some people prefer EasyJet to Ryanair, but it doesn't matter to me either way.

If you do take a budget airline back from Italy, I'd allow at least one London overnight in your schedule, and I wouldn't take the last flight of the day back. I would do the same with trains also, actually. The idea is that if your schedule is upset in anyway, you won't miss your return flight home.

sandjd

Thank you WillTravel - that's a sensible point and I'll take note of it. As my daughter lives in Watford, it's easy for me to stay overnight with her.