Joanel

Going from venice to florence. When look at train schedule = all trains seem to leave from mestre (sp) station. Where is that located and how get there?

Also you get to pick you seats. would prefer NOT to travel backwards. How do you tell from the diagram which seats to pick?

Thanks

LoveItaly

Hi Joanel, you can just buy your train tickets at the Santa Lucia train station in Venice. If the train that you want to take (time wise) from Santa Lucia does not go to Florence you just change trains at the Mestre train station which is about 10 minutes from the Santa Lucia train station. I have never purchased train tickets in advance via the website so I cannot answer your question about the seat diagrams.

Myer

Mestre is between Venice (Santa Luccia train station) and Florence. It's about 20 minutes outside of Venice.

When you look up the train schedule, it should come back and ask which you want.

Some people stay in Mestre because it's less expensive (and much less convenient). Others stay there if they're driving a car and are afraid or don't want to leave their car in the venice parking lots.

I just looked it up on trenitalia and some trains come up as both stations.

That's kind of strange.
- - - -
Ok. I went to old reliable. The German Railway system. They're the best.

I looked up the Eurostar train ES9473 that leave at 16:32.

It comes back and ask that I select one of the two stations. I picked Santa Luccia since it's further from Florence. It leave at 16:32

hen I looked at intermediate stops. Sure enough, Mestre is at 16:44.

You may do better using the German system for info.

hermie

I just returned from my trip to Italy and we took the train from Venice to Florence. When we got to Venice, we walked from the St. Mark's area to the Santa Lucia train station which was really fun because we got to explore more of the island. We bought our tickets 2 days before we needed to leave using the self-service machine (look for the one that says it takes credit cards if you want to pay w/credit card). When you use the machine, it lets you pick the seats you want. You can sit 2 people facing each other or there is a set of 4 with 2 next to each other and the other 2 facing you. We wanted it to be just the 2 of us so we bought the 2 facing each other. If you don't want to ride backwards, then pick 2 next to each other but know that you will be across from 2 other passengers.

We actually made a huge mistake by not realizing there was the Maestre train station which is where our train for Florence was departing from. Thankfully we caught the Santa Lucia train that was going to Maestre in time to catch our train. Your ticket to Florence includes the free train ride from Santa Lucia to Maestre; it's only 10 min away on the train. It was all very easy, even thought we screwed up and didn't realize until last minute that we weren't at Maestre.

Intrepid1

You need to look at the schedule again..many if not all of the Eurostar trains Venice-Florence leave from Santa Lucia. IC's tend to leave from Maestre.

Intrepid1

That's what the "S.L." in BLUE means on the timetable.

grsing

The schedule may just be defaulting to Mestre, because it makes your trip shorter. Try typing in "Venezia S. Lucia" and you'll find that most trains actually start there, stopping in Mestre about 10 minutes later and continuing to wherever.

ira

Hi J,

Are you looking at www.trenitalia.com?

If you are leaving from Venice SL, your train will be facing forward.

Sometimes trains reverse direction on route, eg, if you stop in Rome, you could pull in facing forward and pull out facing backward.