You might have noticed we don’t really like to fly. For our trips to London, a train has always been the most logical choice: faster and—when booked well in advance—cheaper than flying. For our trip to other destinations in the UK, Berlin, and Prague, the price was still competitive most of the time, but journeys like that take a bit longer already. Our Italy trip in late spring, however, is taking the train craze to the next level.
No fewer than ten different trains will take us to and through Italy! And you can take ‘ten different trains’ almost literally: one Thello sleeper, one Trenitalia Regionale Veloce, one Trenitalia InterCity, one Frecciabianca, one Frecciarossa, one Italo train, one Trenitalia EuroCity, one TGV Lyria, and two Thalyses!
The trick of keeping a trip like this affordable, is booking each of those journeys as soon as they become available, taking advantage of all kinds of Super Economy and Mini fares. Considering the different booking windows the rail operators use, this means it actually took several weeks to get it all sorted!
The only setback was the direct Milan-Paris TGV we planned on booking: it never appeared! We finally found out that specific TGV wouldn’t run this spring due to railroad works, so we’ll be making a little detour over Zürich. Apparently there is a very good beer shop in the station, so we don’t really mind… ?
Our B&Bs are all booked as well, so we’re now all set for our ten day Viaggio in Italia!
