A couple of helpful tips for train/car travel in Italy

[Leejnd4]

I was talking to some friends yesterday about their upcoming trip, and I gave them some tips to help them. It occurred to me that these would be of value to any of my fellow CruiseCritic members who might be heading off to Italy.

 

1. Train travel: this is something I learned the hard way. When you buy your train ticket, you MUST have it stamped before you board the train; if you don't, you will have to pay a fine. This is relatively new -- at least, they weren't doing this when we were there two years ago. There are these little machines inside the stations -- you simply insert your ticket and it gets stamped. You must do this each time you board, even for the return leg of a round-trip ticket. Also, they no longer allow you to just board the train and purchase tickets onboard without paying a hefty fine.

 

When I was there last month, I bought a round-trip ticket from Santa Margherita Ligure to Riomaggiore. The attendant in the station in SML pointed us towards the stamping machine, but I completely forgot about this when I was returning, and the station was so crowded that no attendant was watching. When the train conductor came by to ask for our tickets, he made me pay 6 Euros! Ouch! No, not a huge amount of money, but with the exchange rate as it was then, that was almost $10. Plus, if you are traveling with others, that adds up!

 

Moral of the story is -- DON'T FORGET TO PURCHASE AND STAMP YOUR TICKET BEFORE YOU BOARD!

 

2. Driving in the countryside: We spent five days post-cruise in Italy with a rental car, and did a lot of driving around sightseeing. We had a good map, but the problem is that it seems very few streets have names or numbers associated with them. So when you come to an intersection, the streets are marked only with signs pointing towards the next town. Even if you are continuing straight on one road for a ways, you will often come to forks or roundabouts where it's unclear which direction is actually staying on the road you were on!

 

So, what you need to do is have your navigator always keep track of where you are on the map, and what the names are of the next couple of towns you will be passing through. That way, when you get to a fork, roundabout or intersection, you simply follow the sign pointing towards the next town.

 

3. Driving in Rome: First of all, DON'T DO IT! ;) But really, if do have to drive into Rome (which we did, because the day we were meeting up with friends there, there was a railway strike!), be sure to get yourself a map that actually shows all the one way streets, and which direction they go. We learned the hard way that the old adage that "all roads lead to Rome" is wrong -- all roads lead OUT of Rome, the WRONG WAY! We finally did figure out that, yes, it IS possible to actually drive into downtown Rome, but you have to have a really great map that indicates the directions of the one-way streets, so you can plot your course.

 

I hope this helps someone avoid the mistakes we made! :)

 

LeeAnne

[eskie9]

Lee Anne,

Great information. We are planning on taking the train from Rome to Venice and back in August. Your information really helped. I appreciate it!

[vivian02]

Just returned from Germany two weeks ago. We had GPS in the car and it was wonderful. I can imagine how nice it would be touring Itally with GPS. Tim

[Sunny Day]

Thanks for the great advice!

[mountainhouse]

Thanks very much. Interestingly, I take a commuter train in the SF Bay area. It requires stamping of tickets before boarding. Probably wouldn't have crossed my mind in Europe. :o