Feedback on my journey to and from Trieste

[ollienbertsmum]

I always find the information on these boards so helpful.  Trieste is a relatively new port and there are often questions about how to get there.  I thought that I would tell what we did in case it helps others trying to work out how to get to their ship.

 

So this is our second cruise from this area.  We went on one of the last cruises that actually went from Venice.  Now the ‘Venice’ port has moved to either Ravenna or Trieste.  We left from Trieste.

 

After I booked the cruise I realised that transport would be more difficult.  This is what I did.

 

The first problem is that I could not find direct flights from Malaga to  Venice. On our past cruise we got a direct flight from Treviso airport which is about 30 km from Venice.  If there are direct flights to Venice Marco Polo they were not on the days we wanted.   I looked around for other airports.  It seemed to me that the Ryanair to Bologna could work (it was a good price) if we stayed overnight in Bologna.  This also gave us the opportunity to explore that lovely city.  We then stayed overnight in Trieste and boarded from there.  We could have gone to Trieste on the day, I just don’t like staying more than a taxi drive away from the port.

 

Flying to Bologna was easy.  We got a taxi to our AirBnB, the taxi was just 20 euro which was less than we would have paid for public transport to get us to town. By getting a taxi we were shown where our accommodation was.

 

Exploring Bologna was enjoyable even though we coincided with a (planned) big union demonstration.  I was concerned if this would have a knock on effect to the famous ‘train strikes’.  It didn’t but we did run into other problems as I will now describe.

 

We had dumped our cases at a left luggage at the station, we picked them up in time for a 16.01 departure that was planned to take almost 4 hours to get to Trieste.  When we arrived back at the station, the display board didn’t show our train.  It seemed that our train was delayed.  The length and reason for the delay was not clear.  Then it seemed like other trains were delayed.  It seemed that there was a high voltage technical issue further up the line.    The delay crept up and at one point it was shown as 240 minutes.  We were getting frustrated and of course no one ever knows what is going on in these situations.

 

Getting to the port

 

After about 50 minutes a train to Venice passed through.  We were told that it was too full for us to board (didn’t look it, but who knows), another train would pass through in five minutes.  It was more like 30 minutes later and a train to Venice arrived.  This time we didn’t ask, we just got on and we set off.  We had a planned change at Venice Mestre.  Whilst on the train the platform number of our next train was displayed.  This was very helpful because trains were hourly and there was one about to leave.  This actually helped to make up for our delay.   

 

So now we were at Venice Mestre.  This might be the starting point for most cruisers.  The train to Trieste was almost two hours, but absolutely trouble-free.

 

We ended up arriving in Trieste about an hour after our original planned arrival.  It was  just after sunset which was later than I wanted because we had to look for our accommodation in the dark.  We were a little late to look for a restaurant so we bought our supper at a supermarket and prepared in the accommodation.   Trieste is not difficult to get around.

 

So there was a delay but in the end, getting to Trieste from Venice Mestre train station was not hard.

 

Reflecting on the first part of the journey - if we had got ourselves to Venice using Marco Polo airport and stayed in Venice overnight (or two nights) we could have gone from Venice Santa Lucia train station to Mestre train station and easily got to Treiste.   It would not have seemed difficult.  So I am almost wondering why getting to Trieste seems like a problem.  It is two hours, but not a difficult two hours.

 

Return journey

 

our flight home was from Venice Marco Polo.  We had to change in Zurich, but it was a short stopover.  We were flying Swiss Air and they give you free chocolate so I was happy about that.

 

Getting to Marco Polo from Trieste was easy using  a Flixbus.  I am too cautious.  I was once on a ship that arrived late because we picked up some people attempting a crossing of the med from africa.  There was a bus around 9 am that we could have easily have caught and then may well have got an earlier flight.  I was happy to explore Trieste for a while.  We caught a 3 pm Flixbus.

 

Anyway it was not clear where the bus left from, the ticket office was not helpful because it seems that Flix has nothing to do with them.  There were enough passengers from the cruise to work out that the platform had changed.

 

Once on the Flixbus, we were on our way.  The bus was almost exactly on time.  Once at Marco Polo airport we were fine.  We got home exactly on time.  It was almost midnight but I had booked a car to get us home.  I did not have to worry about driving myself.

 

So was going from Trieste that hard?

 

No it was not difficult.  If we had stayed in Venice for one or two days the journey from Santa Lucia would have been 2 hours but not complicate.  On our return from Trieste the trains did not seem as easy so it was more like “do we trust a bus called Flix?” and we should have .

 

Just to reassure cruisers

 

We do not speak Italian.  We always found staff who spoke good English and could help. This was even when the staff themselves were frustrated about the train delays due to the technical issues.

[michelle028]

Thank you for the post!