Originally Posted by
slawecki
the last time i did train travel in italy, we had 3 choices:
eurostar,(ES) high speed and expensive
inter city(IC) both first and second class. almost as fast as the es, and less than half the price.
locals(forgot the name), but very slow.(take about 4x the es or ic.)
look into IC's. bring food and wine. the trip from bologna to venice adds less than 30min to the trip. first class is usually empty. the seats are huge. great way to travel...
I can't compare the ES to the Freebie of today (no data), but my son took an intercity direct from Milano to to Terentola (close to Perugia) last week. Departure at ~12:30 pm arrival around 7:30. Using the freccia rossa to Firenze and then a regional, it would have taken almost 3 hours less including the time for the connection! It would have cost 20 Euro more, though.