Trains and timeline
 

My wife and I are going to be in Ravello for a wedding and have a week to travel after. My thoughts were Florence and Rome.
I have a few questions.
We want to travel by train. Is it difficult to get from the Amalfi coast to Florence? Do we need to make any kind of reservations for the train. Should we overnight in Rome?
I am thinking Sun-Thurs in Florence Thurs-Sun in Rome.
All input is welcome!

You would probably have to catch the train from Naples. A direct train will take about 3.5 hours.

Hello Amigoman -

You can go to the trenitalia.com website to check out schedules and costs for train tickets for any connections within Italy. The webiste is in Italian, but there is a link for an English version - go to that.

Travelnut is right - you'g go from Naples (or Salerno I guess) to Florence (by way of Rome I'd think). Not sure if you'd have to change trains in Rome.

You can purchase your tickets online at trenitalia.com, but only if your trip is less than 60 days out. You can also easily purchase the tickets once you're in Italy. If your travel is more than 60 days out, you can put in dummy dates to call up schedules and costs for tickets.

Hope this helps.

KC

Salerno is perhaps a better option than Naples as you can get there quicker via the Amalfi bus service and then won't have to transfer in naples and also the Sorrento-Naples commuter train can be very crowded and kind of dumpy. At Salerno you catch direct mainline trains to Rome and Florence (reservations required on Eurostar trains and IC+ (ICp) trains but not on IC trains. Naples however has significantly more train service - one hourly IC train and one hourly Eurostar train - Salerno has about hourly mainly IC trains i think though on some you must change at Naples. I'd go the Salerno route.

Am I better off renting a car? or is that a huge pain in Florence?

Si

The Salerno route would be the best. I'm not sure about needing reservations, though. I suspect it depends on the time of year. We took the IC+ from Rome to Naples and then the Eurostar from Naples to Rome (our friends took it on to Florence) and we got our tickets right before the train left with no problem. If you are going from Salerno to Florence it would probably be about 4 hours on the Eurostar, so I doubt you would need to spend the night in Rome. Check out the Trenitalia website. I believe that you cannot put a date in that is more than 60 days in the future, but you can just put in a sample date and get the times since they don't seem to change any from day to day.

Rent a car if you want to die. Not being totally facetious either.

Oh, and check out Amalfi down below, neat little town and there are some great woods and ravines and tiny villages back behind Ravello.

Hi A,

How much time will you have on the AC?

Depending on when you are going, you might like to take the ferry from Amalfi to Salerno. The train station is about 3 blk NW of the ferry dock.

From there, you can take the train to Florence - about 4:30 hr.

Most trains require a change in Rome.

See www.trenitalia.com

Have a nice visit.

((I))