In May and June, my sister and I will need to take 2 train trips; one from Venice to Florence and the other from Siena to Rome. These are the only train trips we will be taking and the one from Siena will need to be in the very early morning hours. Any suggestions? I've read about the Trenitalia IC Intercity rail ticket but would like insight as to which type of ticket to purchase? Where is the best place to purchase such a ticket? Thank you for any help you may provide.

From Venice to Florence, perhaps it would be most convenient to take direct ES train, depart from Venezia S.L. to Firenze S.M.N. every two hours, takes less than 3 hours.

From Siena to Rome, all trains involve one change, takes around 3-4 hours. It seems more convenient to take direct bus ( a little over 3 hours), for bus details, please check: www: sena.it.

You could buy all tickets at Venice train station; for some cheap tickets, you would have to purchase online, but www.trenitalia.it seems not the easiest site to deal with.

forget hassling with the trenitalia site and just buy your tickets like above says all at once in Venice - so many trains no problem getting seats usually. Siena to Rome often involves regional trains where reservations are not possible.

But you can try the trenitalia site and print out your own ticket or get a code to retrieve it in Italy or to give to the conductor - can save some money but regular fares in Italy are still dirt cheap compared to other countries.

Wandrian rail is the best place to buy Italy point-point tickets in U.S. as this is the official U.S. outlet for the Italian railways and when i've checked offer cheaper Italian tickets than competitor RailEurope. But still prices are signifcantly higher than in Europe...but some folks understandable don't want to hassle with buying in Italy and just as soon have a ticket in hand and just have to show up and board the train. WandrianRail.com, operator of www.railsaver.com.

Its very easy to buy your train tickets at a machine in the train station, or you can get from any travel agent in Italy who displays the trenitalia logo. Slowtrav.com has a section on trains in Italy that explains the different types of trains and tickets.

My husband and I did a similar trip a couple years ago. We pre-purchased our Venice to Florence ticket on trenitalia.com before we left USA. We then printed the trail schedules/times from trenitalia for the other trips we were interested in but couldn't pre-buy. For instance Siena to Rome (took train from those places as well). We just went to the ticket window with my printed out schedule - times/train # highlighted, and bought our tickets the same day we were to travel. No problems!!! great way to travel in Italy.

we a really easy time last week with the trains we booked all our res. from aaa and had reserved seats. we knew our coach no.too.we were told so many stories about reservations. i was crazy i can say this was the best thing we did it made our trip wonderful.e traveled from venice to florence to rome and to naples with pleasure