My husband and I are planning a trip to Italy in September. We will be visiting the popular cities (Rome, Florence, Venice, Cinque Terre) and I was wondering what information or advice Fodorites have about purchasing train tickets in advance.

I studied abroad in Florence eight years ago, and so I am familiar with the rails, but as students, we purchased any train tickets either at the station or a travel agent a couple days in advance.

On this trip, I would love to have all our transportation booked as much in advance as possible, and was wondering the best way to go about this.

Thanks much!

Hi L,

A: You can try booking your tickets online at www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html, but it is a very quirky and not reliable website.

You want the Amica discount fares.

B: You can get all of your tickets at the first train station in Italy.

I would fly into Venice and out of Rome.

Enjoy your visit.

In Rome, I have used Pantheon Travel to book my train reservations.

Pantheon Travel
Via Caterina di Siena, 45
phone: 66785851 (in Rome)

Others on the board have contacted them before they left home to do the booking.

Thanks for the tips. I will likely go with the route you both suggested and book them at soon as we get there. We land in Rome, so I will definitely check out Pantheon Travel.

Yes, fly into Venice and home from Rome.

You can book ahead at www.ferroviedellostato.it, but no further out than 60 days.

If that proves to be a bear, wait til you get there. But use the site to research, write down all the trains you want to take, neatly, with times of day (24-hr), dates (dd/mm/yyyy), what class, how many, seat preference (finestrino=window, corridoio=aisle).

In Venice you can take that piece of paper with your entire train itinerary to a ticket agent at the station and you'll walk away with all you need, and you can ask questions and you can discuss seating while the agent is a it - full service at its best.

If you see a travel agency with the FS (Ferrovie dello Stato - State Railways) logo somewhere along your strolls, try them, they can do it, too.