Having Reservations About Eurostar Trains In Italy

Travelling by train in Italy shortly? News comes via the trenitalia.it site that, following what must have been an experiment whereby reservations were only obligatory on the weekends and at holiday periods, the high-speed Eurostar trains have gone back to being reservations-only. Not the ones running from Paris to London, you understand, but the ones that took the same name (because it sounded fun?) and ply from and to Milan/Bologna/Florence/Rome/Naples right the way through to Palermo. The deal is that you buy a ticket for a specific train. What if you miss it? Change your mind? Cannot travel? If the empêchement occurs before the train is due to depart, you can change the date and time of travel free of charge, at a travel agency or at the station. If you miss the train, you have 24 hours to make a new reservation at a cost of three euro. (The site does not specify whether it has to be the same as the one that issued the ticket. I would not be at surprised if this was the case. Not because I am a cynic but because, as the Italians say, conosco i miei polli and the said chickens of my acquaintance have a tendency to be bureaucratic to a fault.) If you cannot make it to the agency or the station within 24 hours, you can kiss your ticket goodbye.

Alternative? Jump on anyway, find the capotreno, tell him that you have no reservation and pay the eight euro penalty. Another alternative? Take the Intercity train which -- if you are going just to Florence from Milan, say, takes just 30 minutes longer. The fare is cheaper and reservations are not obligatory. One tip: if you are travelling from Florence to Milan in the afternoons, aim for the 1601 departure. This is the Cisalpino train that goes to Zurich. Operated with Swiss precision, it costs no more than the regular Intercity service and is just so much more comfortable. They even give you newspapers in First Class.

We went for a 10 days trip in Italy last month, mostly by train. We went to Rome, Florence, Pisa, Greve(Tuscany), Venice, Bolzano, Milan, Como, Torino, Mt Blanc, Pompei in 10 days so it was a pretty compact, hectic schedule. There are many nuances (rules) we discovered in the train travel we wished we knew beforehand. I thought it would be good to take this chance to share them with you.

1. The official Italian train site is not always clear about what the nomenclature stands for.

   These trains generally have lots of stops but the tickets are cheaper:
   R - Regional
   IR - InterRegional
   IC - Intercity
   D - Directo
   E - Express (shorter than D but longer than ES)

   I don't know what E, EN, EC stands for. These are new, modern, express trains; only stop at major cities and they are more expensive (about 20-30% more).

2. Kilometric is not worth the hassle unless you travel on R, IR or D trains only. (Check the TrenItalia site for schedule and type of train) Otherwise, you are going to pay the difference in fare as if you are buying an IC train ticket or ES train ticket in full. See the minigroup discount below for another option to save money.

   What is likely to happen is despite your best effort in calculating, maximizing for the usage of KM, you'll have KM leftover from the ticket and you'll pay same or more on the fare of non R & IR trains. This kind of ticket is good for local short distance travel on local train and particularly for regular commuters.

   For distance, we had 3 different answers from 3 different ticket agents (including one from the Train Information office) for the distance between Torino and Napoli for example. When you ask them, make sure they pick the right station. Also, book for the longest distance on your journey, e.g. If you are going from A to B to C, book A to C and make sure the train stops at B. If the distance is long enough (I think it is 240 km), you can get a free night stopover. The maximum stopover is 48 hours. In general, booking ticket A to C even without the kilometric also works in your favor since we found the prices lower. There is a whole page of rules for kilometric and I can't remember them right now(friend of mine kept the booklet as a souvenir) CIT knows some of the miles but don't bet your farm on them. They are estimates only. Ours are off by 35 km in one case for each person.. Maximum trips are 20. 2 people traveling together count as 2 trips. Kids are counted half of the distance. I don't know how they count trips for kids.

   The trips need to travel in chronological sequence. For instance, if you have them written down on the booklet you are going to travel from Rome to Florence travels on Thursday. You can't add another ride on it before Thursday (Yes, there are ways to undo the first ride.) And always remember to validate your pass. But if you are doing stopover, pay attention to the validation procedure stated in the booklet. You should validate that trip just right before you board the train. And you need to do it again the next day.

3. Even for us traveling 10 days on lots of Italian trains, it is cheaper to buy the tickets separately than buying their passes(either type, we are not even considering Eurorail pass). We reserved the most critical routes when we couldn't afford not to get on the train. It is much cheaper to reserve there than doing it through CIT.($10/$15 per person per trip through CIT but L5800 through local train station) However, most travel books recommend you make reservation during peak season. On most of the cases, we just bought the ticket a few hours before travel.

   If you are traveling in a group of 3 or more, ask for minigroup discount(20%) but that requires reservation. So, the reservation itself can cost more if you are on a short ride(or the fare is cheap). Whenever in doubt, ask them which way is cheaper. There is a deadline and quota for reservation on each train. TrenItalia's site describes what the deadline is but you never know what the quota is until you step up to the agent booth. We ran into different permutation of situations to find out these little things.

4. Finding the track number turns out to be a challenge. You either need to know which train line your ride on because they are listed by final destination, not necessary where you are heading; or you get there ahead of time and ask more than one person which track it is on. No, it is not printed on your ticket. Some track platform takes longer to reach than others in some of the bigger stations. We missed a train because the platform was not in the "common" area. Sometimes, the track number disappears about a few mins before the train departs. If that happens, it means your train are leaving without you. Yep, that happened to us too.

5. If you are riding an overnight train, do prepare to surrender your passport and ticket to the train conductor for keep overnight. They would be handed back to you in the morning. Our night train was very crowded and 3 of us were in C6 (compartment sleeps 6 persons). The top and the middle are better than the bottom if you can pick. Also, you can try the new C4. We almost bought the whole compartment by mistake when we didn't know the agent thought we wanted the whole thing. We had a printout on all the ticket costs on our trip for reference so we knew there was something wrong with the price right away.

6. Get to the train station early if your ride is R or IR(Interregional) and around local peak traffic hours.

7. Some trains have limited amount of nonsmoking, second class carts/seats. And some carts have half smoking and half non-smoking compartment separated by a plastic shelf and door. If you think that works, you are probably a smoker. We ended up standing between carts one time.

8. Some trains have seats labeled non-reserved but some don't. So, you may be asked to leave if you haven't reserved your seat.

9. Italian trains are pretty much ontime unlike what my friends suggested. If you don't speak Italian, watch out when people around you start moving to a different platform. Happened twice to us.

10. If you are going to Pompei, don't take the train from TrenItalia (state company), take the circumvesuviano train. They are more frequent and close to the entrance.

11. We don't speak Italian and were surprised not many train agents in big cities like Rome speak much English either (including the ones staffed at the Train Information office). After 3 unsuccessful trials on getting answers, we had our hotel friend write down the questions (mostly about Kilometric) in Italian so we could bring them to the counter to clarify how it works. That worked immediately. Many Italian know the English words but not necessary the way words string together. Speak slowly in words instead of full sentence got us much further in many cases.

12. If you fly out of Rome, remember to reserve enough cash (L17000) for the train to airport or you can buy it at one of the many ticket booths before you walk 5-7 mins to the platform. We used up our cash on the last day but the platform counter didn't have machine that takes credit card. They do have machine selling tickets quickly on the airport side. I ended up running back to the station ticket lobby lines for the tickets. BTW, the left most side of the ticket lobby has an intl travel line with agent speak English and the best is the line is shorter than the others. Don't expect to pay credit card using the ticket machines situated everywhere throughout the station. They don't work.

13. Click here if you wish to see schedules and purchase tickets.

The trip was taken place during Mar 15-25, 2001, off season for Italy travel. Situations may change during the peak season especially regarding reservations. It is a lovely country. The train system is pretty good despite the little nuisances we experienced.

Edwin
enews123@hotmail.com

We are greatful to our unnamed friend at GoItaly 2000, who painstakingly scanned these two maps to help all travelers plot their routes:

• Main trunk lines

• Every train track in Italy

A LESSON IN TRAIN TRAVEL IN ITALY-We were on the local train from Florence to a small station to change trains to go to Sestri Levanti. We only had one station to pass and then we were to get off. The conductor who was really pleasant came to remind us that we had one more station to go. We got up, got our luggage ready to throw down the train steps ( yes by then ,after train travel for 2 weeks we were into throwing it off and jumping). As the train stopped I grabbed the door handle and twisted it. The door wouldn't open. We tried again and again, the door wouldn't open. The train started up again. The conductor came through and smiled and shrugged. We explained what happened. He held in his laugh, and at the next stop we were prepared to get off and take the next train back. He took us out the other side of the station door, walked us across tracks and hailed another train going back. The conductor of the returning train yelled "where are they going?" Our conductor told him, they both laughed, helped me with the luggage and boosted me up to the first step and off we went. No ticket asked for and a very emphatic reminder that we were to get off when the train stopped. We explained that the door wouldn't open. The new conductor proceeded to show us that there is more than one way to open a train door. You have to look on the diagram. From then on, we took the time to look at the diagram and make sure we could open the door. The thoughtfulness of the conductors turned what could have been a real inconvenience and time waster into a funny and memorable experience.
Valtek@fast.net

One thing I am always thankful for when I travel by train in Italy is the fact that the schedules are always in full view and there are lots of them. More than that, though, I love the fact that the one listing "departures" (partenze) is always yellow, while the one listing "arrivals" (arrivi) is always white. Something else I find useful is the chart showing the composition of trains, i.e. where the first-class carriages are located when the trains comes in. This is very useful because it means you can go to the appropriate point on the platform while waiting for your train to come in. I first found this chart in Florence station, where it is on the left hand side of the big glass doors that lead from the ticket hall. I have been unable to find it in other stations. It must be there. Or it should be, anyway.

By Roberta Kedzierski, Milan