Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Jonesing for Train Travel through Italy

As evident in the name of this blog, I’m often thinking of Italy. It has been a little over a year and half since I’ve been back to Italy – far too long for an Italy addict like me. I have been known to take lovely, calming mental vacations in a moment’s time, wandering through memories of my trips there. No bandwidth, DVD player, or plane ticket required.

What I keep coming back to, and what I conjure up when I research budget airfare to surrounding countries to get back to my beloved Italy, is train travel. I remember the idyllic scenery passing by and wanting to get off the train at every stop to look around.

I also remember how much trouble my husband and I had buying our own train tickets and becoming savvy the hard way about Italy train travel. The electronic ticket machines are easier to use these days than they were ten years ago, but they can still confuse a novice non-Italian-speaking traveler. Not knowing how things work on Trenitalia (the Italian train line) can be expensive and uncomfortable. You should definitely learn what the Convalida yellow box is for (validating your ticket before you get on the train), and understand that buying a ticket on a Eurostar train only means that you can get on the train – not that you get a seat (you need a seat reservation for that, at extra cost).

I wish that we had had a web page like this one to read before we went: Tips to Riding Trenitalia


Credits to Italy Inside for posting the article. Now you can gain instant train travel savvy and just enjoy the ride.

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