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- - Trenitalia.com (https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/trenitalia-com-195065/)

Their on-line ticketing site has been down ever since I tried to buy tiickets about a week ago. There also seems to be a conflict between the schedules posted on Trenitalia and Raileurope.com Has any one used the Raileurope site to buy tickets. Any opinions as to which site is best (in terms of accuracy as well as price) for rail travel in Italy?

Raileurope adds 20-50% to the "real" price - - trenitalia or also known as www.fs-on-line.com - - (i.e., these are the prices you would pay "there", at a railway station IN Italy. And that's before you add on their shipping and handling charges. And keep in mind that with as few as three people traveling together, you will typically get an additional discount for a "group" price, if you wait until you get to Europe to buy your tickets. Best wishes, Rex

RailEurope does not have accurate schedules, and their fares include their markup. They are a ""middleman. Trenitalia is >the< Italian railroad. They know their schedules and fares better than anyone. Their system is not open full time for booking tickets. Check to make sure whether it's open or closed at the time you make your purchase attempts. In most cases, by the way, there's little if any advantage or need to purchase or reserve ahead of time, particularly off season.

Jamal, Thanks for the advice. but I need to be sure about seats. If I arrive on Saturday morning (about 8:00 am at MPX), and want to go from Milan to Florence, you're saying I won't have a problem getting a first class, non-smoking seat on an ES? This is important as my wife hates cigarette smoke and I'm positive she'll be plenty cranky after an overnight, trans-Atlantic flight. Also, is there any difficulty in purchasing tickets at the station with VISA, Mastercard or AMEX? To put it in perspective, neither of us speaks anything close to Italian.

No problem using credit cards. Worried about Italian? Write it down. 2 (due) persone, Milano a Firenze, a 11:20 (or whatever time), 1 (primo) clase, non-fumatori. Don't be surprised if you can't get a non-smoking seat reserved. They get reserved first, but it seems to me there are alwys opportunities to take another seat once on board. And only you know the peace of mind you will receive i nbuying ahead (and over-paying) with raileurope.com - - but keep this in mind - - a ticket gets you the right to ride the train; a reserved seat has no refundability, no change-ability. Thus, if your plane arrives late, or you can't make it to the train station in time, the money for the reserved seat goes up in smoke. Either that, or you reserve later than necessary. My advice remains - - reserve and buy when you arrive Milano Centrale; 15 minutes before you are ready to board will probably be fine.

Thanks for the advice. You convinced me.

Try the www.sbb.ch site of the Swiss railways - it is very clear and covers all major destinations in Italy.

Rex, What's the layout at Milano Centrale? I've never been there. Any place I can find it on the web?

Hi all, just got back from 2 weeks in Italy (!!!) and here's what I did re. the train situation, for what it's worth - I knew my itinerary (when I'd be going from Rome to Florence, Florence to Venice, and Venice back to Rome), and knew I wanted to go 1st class Eurostar on each of the legs - but you can't buy those tickets in advance on the web (or maybe you can thru a broker or something but I thought it was just another middleman to deal with). In advance of my trip, I did my homework and got the train dates, times and numbers off the trenitalia site. When I arrived at Rome Fiumicino airport and took the train into Termini station, I bought all my tickets when I got in to Termini. It was Sunday morning about 10AM and the station was busy, many Italians queing up for their day journeys...the wait wasn't too bad, and when I got to the window with my slip of paper with my train info on it, the girl looked at the paper, looked at me and (no kidding!) gave me a thumbs up! She had a big smile on her face and said, "You are organized!" and we both laughed. I am glad I bought the tickets all at once, rather than "day of journey" at each city's station - didn't have to worry about the 'unpredictability' factor of re. what kind of lines there would be or how quickly they would move...took care of it all at once and it worked great. By the way, if you're choochooing between these cities, don't expect too much "down time" for reading or sleep because so much of the scenery is just gorgeous...a real pleasure to travel on the Eurostar!

Is there any place to reserve first class seats (non-smoking) well in advance?

I don't know if there is a diagram on the web of Milano Centrale or not, but there is nothing confusing about it at all. In fact, I would say it comes close to just three "rooms" (ecluding the two ticket offices which are on either side of the "first room" - - the entry lobby. there is a "Biglietteria Est" and a "Biglietteria Ovest" - - straightforward enough. Then, the other two "rooms" are up a giant staircase - - flanked by a uniques escalator, equpiied so it can safely carry the specially "treaded" luggage carts. You might never believe that you can take such carts up n escalator, but it is actually an ingenious system. Upstairs, on the first floor, there is a wide transverse (runs the entire width of the building) gallery with various shops, including something that it is diverse as a miniature WalMart in its inventory. Looks superficially like a typical airport concession (sandwiches, newspapers, magazines) until you get in it a little further and see that it also has some groceries, socks, underwear, CD's and of course, the usual hodge-podge of touristy stuff. Through this gallery is the final "room" - - the tracks (binari) - - about 32 of them, I think - - like so many lanes in a bowling alley. Easy as pie to understand, and to find your way around. Have a good trip!

Here are some hints on train travel: -Ask what the train is called? I don't exactly know how to ask this in Italian, but for example the train to Florence from Mestre is the Napoli train, since that's where it ends. Ditto, the Naples to Venice (Mestre) train was the Trieste train. Reserve if you are fussy about comfort! The load on a train is unpredictable by us non-Italians. The train to Mestre overnight from Naples on a Monday night(!) was packed. The poor folks who got on in Rome had to sit on the fold-down corridor seats in 2nd class. Best we could find was 2 seats in smoking. (My wife too was NOT impressed). -The lineup for tickets was long. Buy tickets ahead if you can. Buy the day before. We did wait in a line half an hour to 45 minutes. -know what you want. I got stuck on the Mestre train that left half an hour earlier - giving us 3 minutes to get on board. (No wonder there were no seats to be found!) Another train left 1 hr later; in hindsight, I should have insisted. - train departure times in Italy, like airline departure times in Canada and US, are suggestions, nothing more. The only train that left on time was the one we had 3 minutes to find and get on board. Many trains don't have their platform announced until the last minute; then there's a mad dash for the platform and choice seats. -don't worry about floor plans; big train stations are almost all the same. The platforms start at one side and are numbered 1 to x, where is is 8 to 30. Riding in Italy is an experience. My dad used to tell me the story about how Mussolini made the trains run on time...

Kelvy has it right. As far as I know, if you do not go through a travel agent, you have to wait until you get here. I would not use Rail Europe. I don't believe you can buy tickets from trenitalia unless you are actually in Italy. You have to set up an account, and even so, as someone noted, the "buy" portion is down half the time. This summer you had to reserve Eurostar tickets 24 hours in advance. That is relaxed a little. I think it is down to four hours. Still, the No. 1 rule regarding trains in Italy: never take anything at face value or for granted. For instance, I personally regard the IC as the train from hell. Even if you have reserved, first-class seats in a non-smoking compartment, you are not guaranteed that you actually have a seat. Most of the time you will find a squatter in your seat, and you have to negotiate throwing them out or finding another seat, which you sit in until that seat holder throws you out. And good luck, finding a conductor to referee, and even if you do, he or she will either (a) not speak English or (b) suddenly forget how. And I personally do not argue well in Italian. Eurostar is your best bet, it is usually but not always better organized. But then again you have this mysterious, fluctuating window of reservation time. Also, on some Eurostars but not all--and who knows when--there are one or two cars at the back for people who don't have reservations. Of course, you also risk having to stand for the whole trip. Furthermore, Italy is fraught with all sorts of feste and ponte. For instance, today is All Soul's Day, so these four days, until Monday, is a ponte, or a bridge from Thursday until Sunday. The newscasts are full of images of long lines at the train and airports. This means trains will be packed all weekend, especially on Sunday. And finally tracks (binario) change with some frequency, especially in the smaller stations. So if you are waiting for the train on one track and you hear an announcement in Italian over a really bad speaker system and you see everyone pick up their bags and run to another track, then you are advised to do the same. Disregard all of the above if any number of the unions go on one of their many strikes.