Travel from Italy to Zermatt
 

I am planning my son's honeymoon to Italy and Switzerland. He trusted me with this wonderful trip as I have been almost everywhere in Europe, although not recently. They will be traveling June 30 thru July 13th. They arrive in Rome for 3 days, Eurail to Florence for 3 days, Eurail to Venice for 3 days and Eurail to Zermatt Switzerland for 3 days and fly out of Geneva. My questions are as follows: When they are in Rome they will activate their Eurail pass when they leave for Florence. 2nd use will be to Venice and 3rd use to Zermatt. I believe the 6 day, 3 to 5 country saver pass is the most economical and they will use the last three days to travel within Switzerland. Am I calculating this pass correctly? Also does anyone know the train route from Venice to Zermatt and how long will it take? Also, would it cost any more for 2 one way plane tickets - 1) US to Rome and 2) Geneva to US. Can't seem to find a site that enables one to question cost unless you travel to and from the same destination in Europe. Is my only answer to use a travel agent? I often returned home from a different city than the one I started my trip in - I rarely made a complete circle back to the city I started from. Would appreciate your input. Thanks CharleneL

Some thoughts:
1. You may not need a railpass--check it out
2. The route to Zermatt takes 7;23 via Milan and Brig---departs at 0850
3. Use kayak.com and select " multi-city" option--it is called an open jaw itinerary and may not cost more.

Good luck--sounds like a nice honeymoon !
Holler if you need more help.

The open jaw flight would cost $1454 each with one stop each way in Madrid. But, that is from Chicago---you did not tell us your departure city so I used a mid-point.

For train travel, use this planner from the Deutschbahn. They have all the European train schedule:

http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query2.exe/en

The trip is too far in advance, that is the railroad companies have not bothered to publish the schedule for July yet. Just use the same day of the week next week. The schedule is approximately correct. In summer, there are usually more trains to popular destinations.

You will probably not need/want multi country rail pass. Here is the reason.

Look at point to point prices. For Switzerland use www.sbb.ch/en/home.html and for Italy use www.trenitalia.com.

Then realize that even if you use a rail pass, the Italy routes you mentioned require reservations because they will be using highspeed trains. Here are what they cost www.ricksteves.com/rail/pdfs/reservations.pdf. On top of that, you have to make reservations which is not that easily done online. So you probably end up buying reservations in Italy anyway. If that is the case, you could just as well buy the point to point tickets that comes with reservation and pay less overall.

Switzerland is a different matter. The point to point fare is pretty high. So you have to look at various passes, Swisspass, Half-fare card etc, and see how they cover all the intended uses especially high mountain transport discounts. There is no easy answer. Everyone who is faced with this decision need to go through computations to decide which route to take.

Unless they have a compelling reason to fly home from Geneve, you can also look at the return leg of the Multi-city flight to come home from Zurich. The train trip is actually shorter to Zurich. I usually don't use Geneve. For my itinerary, using Zurich provided lower fares and more convenient schedules.