When you are ready to plan a trip to Italy, here are some words of advice.   Do not try to take in too much on one visit.  Hopefully this will not be your ONLY trip to Italy.  Contrary to what you may think, Italy is fairly large.  For instance in May I had to drive from Catania in Sicily to Roma.  The entire trip, calculating the horrific roads between Reggio Calabria and Naples, and the car ferry from Messina to Reggio C,  took twelve hours!!

Your best bet if you must take in as much of Italy during one visit is to stay on the train. Better yet,  make it a ES ( Eurostar train) at that.    There are pluses and minuses to Italian train travel.  Of course now you cannot meander the  back roads at a leisurely pace.  But the benefit is that it is easy for you to visit the three Art Cities: Rome, Florence and Venice in one eight day trip.  When you arrive in the city of your destination you can easily take a cab to your hotel.

Train schedules are available for viewing  on the www.trenitalia.it website.  I  suggest that you purchase your tickets in advance during high season.  During low season ( Nov-March) you can wing it.  Eurostars are more expensive but are worth it for their cleanliness, efficiency, and speed. Plus there are assigned seats which eliminates a lot f the confusion.

Just remember to “Timbrare  vs biglietto” To Stamp your ticket in the yellow box  to validate it at the beginning of the track before you get on. The conductor has zero tolerance for not knowing the rules these days.   You must stamp the ticket in each direction if you have a Round trip ticket.  Here is some important vocabulary for first Italian train travel experience.

Vocabulario:

Carrozza- Carriage

Binario- Track

In Orario- on time

In Ritardo- Late