spaarne

<i>Cpessagno on Apr 2, 14 at 8:01pm
5) What else do I need to know about the train?</i>

See http://tinyurl.com/eym5b for an illustrated introduction to riding the trains of Europe.

That looks like too much luggage. Lighten up or rent a car. A year from now you will be still mad at yourself if you lug all that stuff around. There are many excellent threads on the Fodor's Forum on the subject of packing light. Use the search box above.

Cpessagno

Thanks- I have checked on both websites and actually feel a little better about traveling by train. It seems there isnt a limit on bags and it seems pretty nice.

Spaarne - we will have 2 duffle bags and 2 rolling suit cases. You feel thats too much to do on trains? If we do trains, we would take taxi's to or from our hotels to the train stations, so it will only be in, out and on the train we will be carrying the luggage. $700 is a lot of savings - a night at La Pergola. LOL. I like a car, but either way we will still have to bring the luggage around, no?

socaltraveler

I guess one question would be, how large are your rolling bags? You have to be able to lift your luggage up into the train, sometimes within a matter of minutes. The smaller, and fewer, the bags,the easier this will be. Training is much easier when most of your trip is in and out of cities.

Michael

If you are still thinking of driving, consider reversing your trip, arriving in Milan and going to Venice by train first. Pick up your car when you are ready to leave Venice. The single ride to Venice should be cheaper than the cost of the rental, tolls, fuel and parking fees. It also gives you the opportunity to recover from jet-lag without driving.

KTtravel

We tend to rent cars more than take the train and enjoy the flexibility a car provides. We have even driving into Florence and Paris and (obviously) lived to tell the tale. However, we do drive in San Francisco daily and are pretty comfortable with crazy drivers, one way streets, etc.

There are certainly pros and cons to each approach. You really won't need, or want, a car in cities but one certainly comes in handy for travel in-between and if you want to explore smaller locations.

I don't know where you are departing from but, if you have a long international flight, I would not recommend driving on the day you arrive.

nytraveler

We have done many road trips in europe - but typically stay at more smaller towns than you are and allow multiple whole days for touring the countryside - not just an hour here or there.

A car will be worse than useless most places you will be - and you'll be paying the rental and $35 to $40 per night for a garage except for the time you are in Tuscany. A car is worse than useless (risk of very high fines for driving in pedestrian areas in Venice, Rome, Florence and Bologna. It makes sense to have for a few days you are driving around Tuscany. If this is just one day I would get a guide with car.

It would make sense to rent in Florence if you are spending a week touring Tuscany and then drop off at Rome airport. Otherwise I would train.

nytraveler

But I admit we have never brought home more than 1 or 2 bottles of wine - although we have checked on where in NY to get some of the bottles we've had there.

StCirq

<<Trains: Less expensive- by $500-700, less risk, no stress of directions, parking, tickets, less time between destinations.>>

Sorry, not believable. I can't believe you understand how to get cheap tickets on Trenitalia. Can you show proof of this? It seems really off the charts and incorrect.

thursdaysd

"We plan on sleeping on the plane so we will be well rested for the day. "

In biz class, are you? With no screaming kids? Because otherwise, good luck with that.

And. Pack light. Pack light. Pack light....

constant

Cars - do you know what a ZTL (limited traffic zone) is? These can be a hassle in cities and even quite small towns: http://www.bella-toscana.com/traffic...ions_italy.htm

Car rental companies - what you need to know: http://tuscany-toscana.blogspot.com/...e-renting.html

Trains - difference between first and second class: http://umbria-italia.blogspot.com/20...first-and.html

Tickets - rail passes are a waste of money. Book ahead and you can save large percentages (see the link above). Even normal-priced tickets will come out costing less than a pass for which you need reservations in any case on Freccia trains. Book directly with Italian railways at http://www.trenitalia.com not at reseller sites.

By booking online, you get a downloadable ticket. That means you can get to your platform 5 minutes before the train leaves. Allow time to walk through the station.

Luggage - yes, in most but not all stations, you have to carry your own gear: http://umbria-italia.blogspot.com/20...an-trains.html

Carrying wine back: check the limits for importing alcohol into your State. Wrap the bottles up and seal them in plastic bags. Wine bottles have a habit of leaking or even bursting in planes.

sarge56

cpessagno- The first thing I want to say is that I think you have way too much on your agenda for just two weeks. Those of us who are seasoned travelers would attempt no more than 3-4 maximum.

That being said, I don't know if your itinerary is already set. But I'd suggest something like this:

1 night in Polesine Parmense. Drive to Venice.
3 nights Venice. Train to Bologna.
2 nights Bologna. Train to Florence.
3 nights Florence. (Take a day trip to Siena. Many people do. The express bus from Florence only takes one hour <don't take the train; it is a regional train and can take longer to get there, be very late and the train station is way outside of town>.) Train to Rome.
4 nights Rome. Train to Milan.
1 night Milan. Fly home.

The problem with this itinerary is too much time traveling/packing/unpacking/getting to the train/bus/checking in or out of the hotel. You really lose 1/2 day every time you change cities/hotels.

If you have some hotels where you can cancel without penalty, you might give some thought to changing your plans to make the trip more enjoyable and give yourselves time to actually remember where you were and what you did on vacation.

I would suggest skipping Polesine Parmense. When you get off the plane, just train directly to Rome. Then:

5 nights Rome. Train to Siena. Rent a car in Siena.
3 nights in Siena, using 2 of those days to drive out into Tuscany for winery tours, visiting little towns, (highly suggest a stop at the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore), etc.
After your 3 nights, turn in your car and take the express bus (one hour) from Siena city center to Florence.
3 nights Florence. Train to Venice.
3 nights Venice. Train to Milan.
1 night Milan. Fly home.

With this itinerary, and using June dates on Trenitalia.com, these are the costs I came up with:

Train Milan to Rome: 2x€78 (Bullet train-Super Economy Premium Seating)
Train Rome to Siena: 2x€16.50 (regional train with a change in Chiusi)
Bus Siena to Florence: 2x€10 (Express Sita Bus)
Train Florence to Venice: 2x€19 (Bullet train-2nd class Super Economy. If you want first class, that's 2x€29) However, keep in mind this is just a 2-hour train ride and 2nd class seats are pretty comfortable. [I am a plus-sized woman and ride them all the time.])
Train Venice to Milan: 2x€9 (Bullet train-super economy 2nd class)

When I add all those Euro up, it comes to €265. That is about $363 at today's rate of $1.37.

So, you can see that the train fare can be very, very inexpensive.. if you book as soon as the tickets go on sale. When are you going? It sounds like you are not looking at the two train companies that you should be looking at.

Check out www.trenitalia.com and www.italotreno.it. These are the two companies in Italy that run high-speed trains. On the Trenitalia site, the "Freccia" trains are the bullet trains. Travel times are listed. When you see the "Freccia" label on a train (Frecciarossa, Frecciabianca), these are the fastest trains.

Good luck!

NYCFoodSnob

With Sergio Esposito's Italian Wine Merchants in NYC, my days of schlepping heavy wine bottles are so over. IMW specializes in hard-to-source Italian wines for collectors and enthusiasts. Sergio has impeccable taste in wine.

I love to drive in Italy, too, but the ZTL situation is out of control. The signs are easy to miss if you're busy driving and navigating. Doing research on the zones helps. Avoiding the city centers is the best way to prevent a costly surprise showing up in your mailbox.

annhig

Cpessagno,

I'm going to chime in here and query the wisdom of using a wine tasting trip as a wine buying trip, when at some point [and perhaps at several points] you are going to have to carry the wine around with you, and/or leave it in your car. Neither seems to be a particularly good way to be treating something which you can actually buy at home!

The advice about not driving in Italian cities, especially Florence is spot on - I've driven in some crazy places [london in the rush hour and Chania on Crete springing to mind] but Florence scares even me. Worse than Rome, IMO.

as for luggage, why so much? you need no more clothes for 2 weeks than you do for 3-4 days. one medium size case [a roller bag as you americans like to call them] and a small day pack or handbag should suffice. no way do you want to be trying to get on and off trains pulling 2 bags each. not all italian train stations have lifts or escalators and it's no fun being on holiday with a bad back.

BTW, i like Sarge's itinerary - lots of variety but no one night stands!

Michael

If driving, consider using Pistoia as a base. I suggest Pistoia rather than Lucca farther down the rail line because Pistoia has more commuter trains going to Florence than Lucca. At the same time, it is smaller than Florence and might be easier to maneuver with a car--the Florence ZTL is notorious. There is also a nice restaurant outside Pistoia that might interet you:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...aten-track.cfm

sandralist

I don't like Sarge's itinerary and skipping Polesine Parmense and Antico Corte Pallavicino would be a pity. I get it that there is this "generic" Italy trip that people want to keep advocating believing they are "seasoned travlers" but often it is more complicated and more "day trippy from a base" and actually involves a lot more hassle than people's original plan to road trip. I think substituting Pistoia or Lucca for Florence (even with a car) is needlessly complicating the trip and tying somebody to the most tedious aspects of being tied to train schedules and spending one's Italian vacation inside dumpy train stations.

The OP's plan to take a car into cities given the even increasing numbers of ZTLs and tourists in many of these places is a problem. It is really not a problem to visit a legendary destination restaurant in the countryside for a first meal and then travel a few hours to Florence. It is not a problem to then travel 90 minutes to Rome. (Not everybody needs to see everything in Rome.)

For the second week it is actually a nice idea to go from there to Siena (possibly with a car) for an experience of the wine and to see something of the countryside before going to Bologna for another experience of the food. If there is anything I would take out of this itinerary it would be Venice (I would just head to Milan at that point) but I am more intersted in food and wine than Venice so others would do different.

The OP asked a question about how best to accomplish her itinerary -- by train or car -- and a lot of the responses have veered into telling her she should be going to churches and favorite Fodor's destinations and doing day trips rather than doing what she wants to do in Italy -- and amazingly a lot of the suggestions are to do things in a more complicated time consuming and expensive way than driving!

sandralist

cpessagno,

Maybe your trip could include lunch at Amerigo dal 1934 on your way from Antica Corte Pallavacina to Florence if you are traveling on a Sunday. If you are traveling during the week, head to Vignola instead and have lunch at La Bolognese and some chocolate cake at Barozzi.

I think if you can park your car outside the ZTL in Florence it is OK to keep the car until you get to Rome, but then I would give it up there. I suggest you do the Siena part of your trip before Rome. When it comes time to drop off the car, drive to Orvieto, see the town and have lunch, then turn in the car and take your luggage with you onto the train to Rome. From there do the rest by train.

Ackislander

To see where the ZTL's are in a given place, search the name of the town and ZTL. You will normally find a map of the ZTL, often several, and you will become familiar with the signs.

You need also to be aware of speed cameras, particularly at the transition between open country and small towns. They are merciless, and thy have a year to send you the ticket, just as for a ZTL.

A car is wonderful in Tuscany and other rural parts of Italy. Much of the area around Venice is industrial and has all the charm of Elizabeth, NJ, as seen from the New Jersey Turnpike. I agree with the advice above to rent the car when leaving Venice; it makes no sense to drive through the area twice if you can avoid it.

Autostradi are expensive and may have confusing signs. At a junction with a major highway, the signs read "Bo-Pad", easy once you know that it is the autostrada between Bologna and Padua, but you have to know which city is closer to your destination. You know this unconsciously at home; in another country, you have to think about it all the time.

Cpessagno

All-
First, thank you for all the information, it is really helpful!
Second, I still haven't made a decision. I see the ups and downs of both and just not sure which is best for us.
Sandralist- Thank you for understanding our itinerary.
Our itinerary is set and we have paid for our hotels, so this will not change.
We are honestly not really interested in Milan, we are flying there because it is so cheap and driving straight to Antica Corte.

1 Night Polesine Parmense
3 Nights Florence
3 Nights Rome
2 Nights Siena
1 Night Bologna
2 Nights Venice
1 Night Milan & Fly out.

Day 1 - Polesine Parmense to stay at Antica Corte Pallavicino. We will not miss this special food place and have a special dinner set up at the famous restaurant for dinner. Free parking at hotel.
Then Drive to Florence, Spend 3 Nights. We are staying at the Best Western Hotel River, which is outside of the direct downtown area, just off the highway. They have valet parking, which we were planning on using. We will not be using the car until we pick it up to drive to Rome.
Drive from Florence to Rome, Spending 3 nights in Rome. We have looked up a parking garage for the public,that is 21 euros per night. Here is the website interparking.com. We will be parking at Es Park Giolitti (Rome) Via Giolitti, 267, 00185 Rome. We then take a taxi to our apartment and will not be using the car till we leave Rome.
We will drive from Rome to Siena. We are spending 2 nights. We have planned a small vineyard in south Chianti lunch and wine tasting. We will make sure that we are fine for driving and my husband will only be having a little wine to taste it. We will then drive to our b&b; which has free parking. The next day we will drive into Siena and just park on the outskirts and then walk or taxi in.
From Siena we will drive to Bologna, we are staying at Starhotels Excelsior, which is off the downtown loop and has parking. We will be doing a walking food tour during the day and will not drive the car till we leave.
From Bologna we will drive to Venice, which has parking on the same website as Rome, right at the base of Venice, where we have contacted and has water taxi’s to take us to our Hilton. We will not use the car till we leave Venice.

When we leave Venice, we have the day to drive to Milan. As mentioned before, we are really not interested in Milan. We plan on doing a stop at either Lake Garda or Lake Como, doing lunch and relaxing and then driving to Milan before our flight out the next day.
- Any recommendations around $175 total for MXP are dinner restaurant?
- Any recommendations for lunch or stops at either Lake Garda or Lake Como

So now you know our itinerary and where we plan to stop and how parking is.

As for luggage, we are only bringing packed 2 rolling (medium/large size) suitcases. The duffles bags will be empty when we arrive on the trip, packed in our suit cases. As the trip progresses, we plan on moving dirty clothes to the duffle bags and putting wine in the suit case. We have purchased 16 wine skin sleeves so will not be purchasing more. We live in Nashville, and it’s hard to either get wine shipped here or get things ordered here as there are a lot of laws about wine purchasing. (We have tried to special order bottles before but you can’t, in TN a distributer has to stock or sell it for anything to be ordered). Anyways, we are also visiting smaller vineryards so it may not even be available to us, which is why we plan on buying wine.
I appreciate the stopping points recommendations. And now that you have more information on our (unchanging) itinerary, please let me know what you think about driving vs training.

mama_mia

I think you are sacrificing some of the charms of these cities for the convenience of driving. (You are asking for opinions here.) Most here would have organized the trip differently to take advantage of the trains when they made sense and cars when that was the better option.

I think you are underestimating the extra time it will take to park on the outskirts and then navigate to the central areas where the action is.

But it is your vacation and you have your priorities. Hope it works for you.

Cpessagno

Mamamia- How are we doing that? We are seeing the countryside in Siena, enjoying it rather than opting to stay downtown. We are going to go downtown to see the town but can take a taxi or a short (what 20 minute max walk) to the city.

We made our itinerary so we wouldn't have more than a 3 hour drive ever on one day, at other times, a lot less drive. This is why we are stopping in Bologna, to try all the amazing foods there for one day, and to break up the drive between Siena and Venice.

The only times we are parking not where our hotel is at, is Rome or Venice. Rome, we would have to arrive at the train station and lug our luggage around or take a taxi to our location anyways, whereas with parking, we will do the same thing. Venice, also, we will park and take a vapperto, just like if we had to with the train. So it really wouldnt be a huge amount of time as in parking. It also would save a lot of time since two of our hotels are on the outside of towns and wouldnt be accessible by train (Siena and Parma area). Also, on our day out of Venice to Milan, we want to be able to make stops along the way and see the countryside- something we couldnt do with trains.