train travel in Italy
 

My husband and I will be traveling by train from Milan to Venice, Venice to Cinque Terre, Cinque Terre to Florence and then renting a car from Florence to Rome.
Do we get separate tickets for each leg of the journey or do we get a rail pass?
Should we pre-arrange the train and car from home (NJ)?
Traveling will be within a 2 week time frame
thanks for your help....

Not traveling enough for the Italy Railpass to be cost effective - car rental you should arrange from home for better deals i think - train you should just wait and buy tickets once in Italy - you can buy all your tickets at once at any Italian train station. For lots of great info on Italian trains i always spotlight these fab sites - www.seat61.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com. www.trenitalia.com is the Italian Railways web site for schedules and prices - unfortunately it seems from many comments here that it is virtually impossible to book on it if you are using an American credit card - too bad because you could nab online discounts - so this is why i say to wait until Italy simply because you have no other choice. Well you could buy Italian tickets thru www.raileurope.com but likely will pay more than in Italy and put any angst to rest about getting on trains - there are so so many that it would be a rare rare day when they were sold out - just does not happen so wait until you get there. If you are the type that wants everything nailed down and just have to show up to board the train then the best source for this is IMO www.budgeteuropetravel.com - i have bought railpasses from them for years and can attest to great personal service - but again if it were me i would not sweat it and just in Milan buy all your tickets at once and probably save a few bucks to boot.

I think the previous poster covered your basic questions.

In case you have not actually computed the travel times, you can use the following site. It does not give you the prices, but it is a better designed site than the www.trenitalia.com.

http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

Some comment on itinerary.
CT is easy to get to from Milan but is quite a chore from Venice. Also, is Milan a destination or just a landing point?

the reason for a car rental for the Florence-Rome segment is????

Bookmarking for the excellent train info - thankyou

Why are you renting a car for the drive between 2 cities (Florence to Rome)? You'll spend a lot of time just picking up and dropping off the car not to mention the additional expense and frustration of driving in cities. The train takes 1.5 hours and is so easy and stress free.

I would assume the OP is planning on meandering by car between Florence and Rome thru the proverbial Tuscany and or Umbrian hill towns - if so that would be nice - hitting the likes of Siena, Montepulciano, Cortona, Viterbo, etc.

But yeh if just going straight between the two it is foolish to rent a car IMO - both cities severely limit the use of private vehicles in their historic centers and with the high price of petrol and predatory autostrada tolls added to cost of car would be much more expensive than on the train.

PalenQ- thank you for all your information- it was very very helpful
Greg- Milan is just a landing point- we're staying in Venice for 3 nights before traveling to CT
Dukey1 and Adrienne- we're going to travel to Sienna for a day trip and then continue to Pienza for 2 nights - checking out Montelpuciano and Montelcino while we're there- also stopping in Orvieto after that and then to Rome

For search purposes, Siena has one n and Montalcino has an a.

Sienna is a form of limonite clay most famous in the production of oil paint pigments.>

part of the confusion of how to spell Siena, the famous Tuscan hilltown, stems no doubt from the name of a color 'burnt sienna' - which though Siena seems to have a burnt Sienna hue to many of its buildings, has nothing it seems to have anything to do with Siena itself.

And it's Montepulciano.