# A Few More Italy Questions



## SamH (Jul 4, 2008)

Thanks to the help we received here, we will be spending 4 days in Florence, 1 day in Siena and 3 days in Venice. We will be flying into and out of the airport in Venice.

My first question concerns shorts. I understand that they are not to be worn in churches but what about other places? Are they ok in museums and cafes/restaurants or should I just leave them home? Will I stand out like a sore thumb in shorts?

We are going from the Venice airport to Florence. Given potential flight delays, I was not planning on buying train tickets until arriving at the station. I have recently read that this route is often crowded. Should I buy tickets in advance? Also, is bus the only way to go from the airport to the train station?

Also, please share any not-to-be-missed highlights from your trips to these cities.

Thanks.

Sam


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## Jimster (Jul 4, 2008)

*Italy*

The first thing you do is go to slowtrav.com and register for free and ask these same questions on the Italy bbs.  While you will get good info here, you will get good info there as well.  

I will let someone else weigh in on the shorts issue.  As for the train, it depends on how you intend to travel.  I always travel 1st class on European trains and I am fairly sure you have to have this reservation in advance.  In any case, waiting until you get there to familiarize yourself with how the trains work would be a mistake.  There are several very good sites to help you.  Probably the easiest is ricksteves.com.   Go there and find out more.  You don't say whether you have any travel info but the Rick Steves book will help you.  You can probably get it from your library and then decide later if you need to buy it.  There are other easy to use guides as well including Lonely Planet, Frommers, and Fodors.  You might want to stop in at frommers.com and/or fodors.com and read the message boards there too.


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## Passepartout (Jul 4, 2008)

Jimster offers good advice on getting train tickets in advance. You will have to take a boat (or several steep footbridges) to get to the Venice Ferrovia (train Station). You can also take it (the boat) straight from the airport. A watertaxi is very cool, but not cheap. I'm not sure if the Vaporetto's (water buses) serve the airport. 

As to the shorts issue...There are shorts and there are SHORTS. These cities are all quite used to tourists, and as such, most any attire would be accepted. However, modesty (no sleeveless tops, short-shorts, bare midriffs) would be appropriate in the churches.

Florence has a pretty well defined tourist itinerary. Get one of the guidebooks and read it ahead of time. We've taken 'Walking tours of Florence' (google it) and found it interesting and informative. 

In Venice, my favorite activity is to just wander. You will find very private little streets, piazzas, bridges, cafe's, wine bars, mask makers, churches on your own that aren't in the guides. Do that and it will be more like your own place rather than a guidebook experience.

And remember the number 2 rule of travel....Take half as many clothes and twice as much money as you think you'll need. (#1 is 'don't walk past a bathroom')

Jim Ricks


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## Carolinian (Jul 4, 2008)

Rick Steves site also has a message board, called the Graffiti Wall, that is quite good.

Always be careful buying European train tickets in advance especially from third party sites located in the US.  I have seen some huge markups at Rail Europe for some countries, for example.  Buying online from a Europe-based site of the railroad you are traveling on always seems to be okay.  With the Swiss railroads, for example, you print your ticket out online, and it is exactly the same price as at the station.  For UK rail, buying in advance is advisable, as it is one of the few other than Amtrak where you can save money buying in advance.

With the exception of the UK, and when I don't want to lose any time at the airport getting directly on the train in Switzerland, I buy my tickets at the station in Europe.

My first trip to Italy was the only time I bought tickets in advance anywhere else in Europe.  I found Rail Europe overpriced, but the price was better at a US office run by the Italian railroad and they assured me the price was the same as at the station.  The base price was, but they added a service charge per segment and gave me a reserved seat on every segment, for a further additional fee, of course.  Some of the trains had mandatory reservation, so that was not bad, but some were optional and quite unnecessary.  The worst part, though was that it included a side trip to Llubljana, Slovenia and Zagreb, Croatia, and on those segments the Italian railroad charged me A LOT more than the tickets would have cost at the station.  Moreover, the ''seat reservations'' they sold me on those trains, were not recognized, and one was even on a totally unreserved train!

Given this experience, and the bad prices I have seen elsewhere at third party sites, and the good experience I have had in buying tickets at the station, I don't see in most instances buying them in advance.

Buying at the station, you can also often get some good advice that you wouldn't get from a third party ticket seller, like the Italian station ticket offices telling you if a seat reservation was worthwhile or not on a train with optional reservations.  There was also the time when I bought a one way ticket in Budapest to travel to Bucharest on an overnight train.  The pricing scheme at the time charged about 30% more for a one way ticket than a R/T, so the ticket agent suggested buying a R/T and throwing away the return, which is what I did.  I am sure a third party site would have happily taken my money for the one way without mentioning that option.


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## Conan (Jul 4, 2008)

It's a personal choice, but I don't wear shorts, white sneakers, T-shirts, sweatshirts or baseball caps in European cities.

Nobody will take me as other than an American tourist - - that's what I am - - but I like to dress appropriately.


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## CarlK (Jul 4, 2008)

You may not have time to do this, but, when we were recently in Italy we bought all our train tickets (first class and reserved seats whenever possible)from a travel agent in Rome.  Not all travel agencies sell train tickets, but we were directed to one that did.  I have heard of people using this site:
http://www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html  But, I have also read posts on the Fodors Italy board about problems using the site.  In addition to the websites recommended by others, if you are interested in food (and if you are going to Italy you should be!) you should also check out Chowhound.com.
Carl


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## radmoo (Jul 4, 2008)

*trains, planes, automobiles*

We travelled to Italy last year and used the train to travel from Rome to Amalfi Coast.  I reserved stateside with Italia Rail.  I found the prices to be same as what I saw on official Trenitalia website but much easier to use.  I was even able to speak to a US agent located here in Boston area.  The tickets were delivered in a very timely fashion as well.

Thanks to being bumped on our return flight by Alitalia, we are returing in 9 days.  This time we will be visiting Venice, Tuscany, Umbria and Florence.  We've decided to drive between Venice and Florence but not in the cities, as we want to poke around the little country villages and towns.

I, too, love Rick Steves and would recommend buying his book.

Bon Voyage!


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## Linda74 (Jul 4, 2008)

For men, the convertible pants which zipper to become shorts are great...they wash and dry easily too....
I bought my husband two pairs for our recent Italy trip.....
As a woman, I never wear shorts in Europe.....but that is a personal decision.


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## Carolinian (Jul 5, 2008)

I found the base rail fares the same from the official Italian railroad office in the US as at the station, too.  It was the service charge they added PER SEGMENT that drove up the price since I had a lot of segments.  Do they still add a service charge, and is it still per segment?  You don't pay that at the station.  The other thing was they automatically charged me for a seat reservation on every segment, even if a seat reservation was not required, and even on UNRESERVED trains!  And of course the place that they DID charge me more than the fare I would have gotten at the station was on segments outside of Italy that I bought through them.

I have bought many, many tickets at railway stations in Europe without a problem.  The only time I encountered a train that was sold out was once in Poznan, Poland, but I got a seat on another train to Berlin two hours later, so it was not a big problem.

I like Rick Steves travel philosophy, but his books I find far too limited in what areas within a country that they cover geograhically.  I much prefer Rough Guide or Lonely Planet which are far more thorough.




radmoo said:


> We travelled to Italy last year and used the train to travel from Rome to Amalfi Coast.  I reserved stateside with Italia Rail.  I found the prices to be same as what I saw on official Trenitalia website but much easier to use.  I was even able to speak to a US agent located here in Boston area.  The tickets were delivered in a very timely fashion as well.
> 
> Thanks to being bumped on our return flight by Alitalia, we are returing in 9 days.  This time we will be visiting Venice, Tuscany, Umbria and Florence.  We've decided to drive between Venice and Florence but not in the cities, as we want to poke around the little country villages and towns.
> 
> ...


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## x3 skier (Jul 5, 2008)

My wife never wears shorts in Europe but then she seldom wears them in the States either 

I second the zip off pants. I have them and they work great. The ones I have are light enough that you can stuff the bottoms in a cargo pocket or backpack so you can go from long to short or vice versa as the situation dictates.

Never looked for ladies versions but I suspect they re out there somewhere.

Cheers


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## MULTIZ321 (Jul 5, 2008)

Zip off pants for Ladies

Ladies Trail and Zip off pants

More choices from Sierra Trading Post - on sale


Richard


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