Italian Train question
 

We will be in Rome next May for about 8 days before a Med cruise. We are planning on taking the train from Rome to Florence and then on to Venice. We will then go from Venice, to Florence and finally back to Rome. We will probably be traveling within 4 days. (really quick trip). I have seen recommendation about 2 different train lines to use. Can you give me any suggestions? We are looking at traveling First Class and know which days we will be traveling. We might not know what times we will want to return at the end of our day in Venice and the time we will want to travel back from Florence to Rome.

We have taken trains in London before, but this will be out first time in Italy.

Thank you for your help.

Yo need for the most Trains in Italy a Seat Reservation.

Timetable: http://fahrplan.oebb.at/bin/query.exe/en?L=vs_call

I'm new to that website above so I may be wrong, but it looks like the website retrieves only data from the Trenitalia timetable.
If you want to travel first class, there're 2 options:
- Italo www.italotreno.it
- Freccia Rossa www.trenitalia.it

The first is a new service launched some months ago. You can find some info in this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/italy...-operator.html
The leg Bologna - Venice is not available yet.

The latter is the high speed service provided by the state-owned operator Trenitalia.

Oke i look on the Italo Website:
http://www.ntvspa.it/en/ntv-routes-i...equency-travel
There is a Train vom Venice SL to Bologna -> 9987
On this Italo Website i cold find the Train no more?!
https://biglietti.italotreno.it/Book...o_Ricerca.aspx

I believe they have been releasing the routes and trains step by step, so Venice is planned but not actually available for booking.

PS: ntvspa.it is the corporate website. The website meant for customers is www.italotreno.it

oke on this Website: http://www.italotreno.it/IT/orari-pr...rview_old.aspx
27/10 there is Venice on the Map?!

Ok: you can browse the map by date.
The Bologna - Venezia (Venice) segments are in grey, in the map, as of today.
The footer of the pic says - in Italian - 'not active'.
If you choose dates in the future, you will see the routes available.

2 legs, up to Turin and Venice respectively, are planned but not available yet.
Another leg mentioned in their PR is the FCO-Rome segment.

Currently, customers can only book trains up to October 27 and, based on the map, the route to Venice will be available on October 27. So, likely, the booking will be available soon.

Edit: I see that the OP stated that is travelling on May, so every route should be available.

There any interesting Trains from Venice?
I dont want any Eurofima Coaches i looking for some more interesting.
I arrive on this Monday in Venezia:
Venezia Mestre Bahnhof an 14:05
Venezia Tronchetto an 14:25

Do you mean from Venice to elsewhere in Italy? Only Trenitalia, unfortunately.

Italo is currently available on the routes in black on that map:
Salerno
Naples
Rome
Florence
Bologna
Milan

I know but what kind of High Speed Train the have?
I Austria we have only the Railjet :rolleyes: i know what you think about...
Last year i was in France/ Swiss an i try the Thalys and TGV there are verry nice.

Well, on top of Italo by NTV, there 3 Trenitalia 'Frecce' in Italy:
Freccia Bianca - 'White Arrow', up to 200 km/h
Freccia Argento - 'Silver Arrow', up to 250 km/h
Freccia Rossa - 'Red Arrow', up to 300 km/h

Basically, the proper high speed service is provided with the Freccia Rossa and the Freccia Argento trains.
From Venice, I believe you can only use the Freccia Argento. I don't have experience with the Freccia Argento service from Venice and the Trenitalia website is quite poor - lacking of images - but I believe you can expect to see the service operated by an ETR 600. Try and Gooogle ETR 600 and/or Freccia Argento and you can see some pic.
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Pendolino
Maybe some other forumer can be more helpful.

Some older ETR 485 is still in use as Freccia Argento, I suppose.

The old Cisalpino?
I see i the most time in Zürich but i never take a ride.

maybe to the north. to the south and west, is the po valley. flat, nice dirt, and very green. very few houses, villages, vineyards, not a single hill or mountain. there are mountains blq-florence.

we once did train blq-nce. all overbuilt. could see nothing the whole way. very boring.

i don't think Italy has any/many eurofima coaches. the std coach is not special and probably the same. the high speed coaches are pretty, and have leather. they are also boring. sort of like the thrill of flying in an a380. i prefer first in the std coaches. we take 4 seats for the two of us, pack wine and a lunch.

I'm still confused as to which website I should be looking at to price out train tickets and times. Thanks!!

Rome - Florence
Florence - Venice
Venice - Florence
Florence - Rome

Is there a pressing need to stop in Florence twice? When taking the train from Rome to Venice (or vice versa) you pass through Florence, but there are certainly ways to do this w/o stopping/changing trains.

W/that said, you won't be able to get accurate information on times/prices for your schedule this far in advance.

If you just want to check things out for information, start with trenitalia and Italo NTV.