Train from Paris - Florence - Rome . . . Top tips?

[EllenRose]

Have possibly had a mad idea to do something different this year and travel across Europe by train with dh and dc's (14, 10 and 6) in early August. Thought we would get early Eurostar to Paris and spend a day there before catching the night train down to Milan, connecting train onward to Rome and spend a couple of days then back to Florence and do the same there before returning home.

Appreciate we won't have huge amounts of time in each place - is it realistic? Where must we visit and what should I book in advance? Tips on where to stay also welcome - apartments better than hotels?

Neither dh nor I are exactly fluent in French although it is better than our Italian? I am assuming that most people will speak better English than we do French /Italian .

Oh dear, friend has just looked at me like I am nuts to be considering this with children

Possibly swapping Florence for a couple of days in Lake Como before train back through alps to Zurich as the dc's might not be able to stand more museums etc. Any thoughts much appreciated

firstly, there used to by an overnight train to rome - the line (and the one to milan/venice) has been taken over by a company called thello - there was no break in service for the milan train, but the rome train stopped in december and was due to start again in june. i think the website is thello.com

have a look at seat61.com if you haven't already - most inspiring.

we have been getting overnight trains to italy since before the DDs, took DD1 on one at 17 months for the first time and DD2 at 6 months, with 2.11 yr old DD1 so i definitely don't think you're crazy.

i do think you're crazy getting a train to milan if you're going to rome though - the train arrives in milan at 6.38am, which may be fine, until you remember that you have just come from the UK where it will still be 5.38. the rome train is more expensive (it is a lot further, after all), but you get there about 10.15 i think, which is much more civilised!

do book your eurostar as soon as possible - adults (and children over 12 i believe) can travel for £69.99 return if you book early enough - tickets go on sale 4 months in advance and the sooner you book, the more likely you are to get cheaper tickets. also, if you can be flexible with your dates and times. we always book through eurostar.com as they have a loyalty scheme which occasionally gives us £20 off.

the rome overnight train also stops in florence, but i see you have changed your mind about going there...

if you're going to zurich it takes about 4 hours by TGV to get from there to paris, so no need for an overnight train, but the beauty of overnight trains is that you maximise your time and minimise your accommodation costs. also it's really fun. i think so anyway!

i find the deutche bahn website best for looking up trains across europe (bahn.de then there's an english flag somewhere to change the language) and making connections.

ask me anything you like, if i have missed anything out - i consider myself to be quite an expert on this subject!

Thanks janek - yes, my ideal would be straight to Rome. The seat 61 site was implying that the direct train should start again from July but when I put rough dates in the thello site it seemed to still be suggesting having to do sleeper to Milan then change. I am hoping we can do the direct version so will keep looking as happy to do the overnight - think it is all part of the adventure

Glad to know we are not mad - have you always booked your tickets/ accommodation yourself?

Also, what have you taken luggage wise? It is a nightmare taking wheeled cases?

Sorry for all the questions - great to find someone who has done similar things.

okay, so there are currently no overnight trains from paris to rome, according to seat 61 the service is due to start mid july, but if they're not on sale yet that's not much use for people who need to book their eurostar asap.

btw are you in london? if not, you should get a family railcard to minimise rail fares in the UK - 2/3 off child tickets and 1/3 off adults tickets, plus you can travel at peak times on an off-peak return, as long as you don't start your journey on network southeast.

We are near Bath so will definitely get a rail card too. I want to get on and book the Eurostar now, we could wait a few weeks to check the sleeper I guess?

we crossed posts at 4pm by the way, will respond now...

firstly, family railcard - for the past 4 or 5 years the daily mail have done an offer where you get a free family railcard for a couple of months and then a code to buy a year one for half price. it is around this time of year, so am desperately keeping my eyes open for this and hoping they will do it again this year.

if you buy your uk train tickets in person you will need to own a family railcard already i think, if you get them online then there's no one to check, so you could buy it at a later date, thereby wringing most value from it.

if you shop in tescos then you can exchange tesco vouchers for red spotted hanky vouchers redspottedhanky.com at twice the face value to pay for uk rail tickets.

I've done that train- with 40 American teenagers in tow!! Sad to hear it's not running now, but at least it's starting up again in the summer....As I recall, it's a perpetually late rustbucket and cheap as chips....a real blast from the past, I loved it!

I think the compartments are for 6, so if you have someone in with you 5, you can intimidate them by sheer force of numbers....

And, if the service has stayed the same, the food's pretty grim (even if Italian), so take supplies.

I would warn you about the possibility of HUNDREDS of American teens on the train (the educational travel companies cottoned on to the fact that it was a good cheap way to transport them across the continent), but you'll be glad to know that the high school trip season will have ended by late July/August, so you should be spared that.

I have to warn you that English isn't massively widely spoken in Italy, but you should be fine in tourist areas, and people are usually happy to bend over backwards to try to communicate unlike the Parisians

I hope you have a brilliant time if you do it! I bet the kids will love it!

(I hope that was a help, I can't hope to add anything to Janek's excellent and up-to-date advice, but I can rant enthusiastically!)

Oh yes, beware Florence summertime temperatures- it's in a bowl in the hills, so can get excessively hot (even more so than Rome)- splashing out on air conditioned hotels could be a lifesaver.

secondly, european rail travel - yes, if you were planning on spending the day in paris anyway, then there is no reason why you shouldn't buy your eurostar tickets now and get the overnight train tickets if they ever exist.

i would warn you though that trains on saturday nights (and poss friday nights i would imagine) to milan may sell out (only an issue if the rome train does not materialise, if it does then as long as you can't buy tickets then no one else can either...) so consider arriving in paris on a day other than saturday, unless you don't mind spending a night there if you don't manage to get your train tickets for whatever reason. given that your holiday is less than 4 months away and so the tickets have already been on sale for a few days/weeks (depending on when you want to travel) the eurostar will probably be cheaper if you don't travel on a saturday anyway.

yes, we have always booked our tickets ourselves - previously we booked the overnight tickets through raileurope.co.uk but now that thello have taken over this is no longer possible. we are going to italy at half term though and so used the new thello site to book that - it was all in french, but not such difficult french that you couldn't book. we did need to enter our passport numbers though, which we've never had to do before.

we don't need accommodation i'm afraid, because the PILs have an apartment in tuscany, so we always go there (oh the hardship...). the seat 61 website recommends a hotel booking website i think, we normally use booking.com if we need one, but that's not the one he mentions.

we normally use 65 litre rucksacks, because we haven't realised that we've grown up yet. also, we don't own a wheeled case. and the DDs are only 6 and 3, so not able to carry/drag their own stuff without it causing more trouble than it's worth. but this half term will be the first time we've travelled to europe in a long time without a pushchair. it has always been fine - we used to have a rule that the pushchair didn't go on the escalators, but once we got rid of that rule any paris transfer was a lot less labour intensive. there are lifts and escalators on the metro, although like on the tube if you are just crossing a railway line there are a few steps up then a few steps back down again. i can report back more fully after half term on the specific route, if you can wait that long...

previously when we've caught the train from gare de bercy, but one of the changes is that it now goes from gare de lyon, i haven't yet worked out what difference this might make to our journey across paris - we normally get the metro, but i think the RER goes straight to gare de lyon so we might get that, although it is a slightly more intimidating experience...

presumably gare de lyon has left luggage, gare de bercy didn't.

don't know if you've noticed, but this is one of my favourite subjects.

Awww......I'm going to miss Gare de Bercy (not sure why, maybe because it's in an area I've never got round to exploring...?). But the Gare de Lyon is much more central, with, um, some actual facilities......

there's a toilet and a rubbish shop. and a vending machine. what more do you want?

Thank you both so much - very excited now

Pre children DH and I went overnight to Florence for a week then returned via Switzerland staying in Vevey on the shore of Lake Geneva. It was a fantastic experience and we hope to do it again when our DCs are older.

Book for a meal in the dining carriage on the sleeper. While you are out your cabin is transformed into bunks!

Good idea abut the meal jollybear - I think my dd will love the sleeper transformation. She is nearly as excited as me

If you decide to come back a different way, morning TGV from Zurich to Paris lets you get a Eurostar home to London the same day.
I should warn you though that Zurich is insanely expensive. Stay the Italian side (or cross into France, even the euro looks cheap compared to the swiss franc) and look at seat 61's suggestions for quickest ways back. I would miss out Florence this time, it will be insanely hot, crowded and the museums probably deeply unappreciated by your DC. Go up into the mountains at Aosta, or go to one of the lakes instead
We got sleeper to Munich from Paris last summer with 2 dc (then 2 and 5) and they had a ball.

daily mail comes good shocker!

you may have to buy the daily mail twice in order to avail yourself of this offer, but still... can't have everything.

right, the first codeword you need is FAMILY.

I think it's a fab idea. I was thinking of Paris-Venice-Rome-Naples with ds (age 13), providing I get paid. I'm going to keep an eye on your thread.

second codeword is FRIENDS. thanks for sharing misscatterpus!

Italy in early August can be absolutely boiling, ie.35 degrees + so think I'd definitely factor in some time at the lakes rather than just Rome and Florence.

fyi my free family railcard has arrived. i am delighted!

If you hold Eurostar tickets you can buy tickets from UK stations to St Pancras International at a special rate - Seat61.com has details.

I'd book Eurostar now - I was looking at August dates and the prices were going up every time I looked.

Also, although the European tickets were supposed to go on sale 3 months in advance, the RailEurope site was selling tickets for August already, and I missed the really cheap fares, so worth checking now.

chippy they've changed it - it's now four months in advance for eurostar tickets (still 90 days for other european tickets though, apart from the new overnight paris-milan thello service, which is also 4 months). they did this a few years ago and it pisses me off every year when i can't buy my eurostar tickets till at least a month after they go on sale because i'm not sure of the time of my connections yet because the tickets haven't been released.

i knew you could get special price tickets to st pancras (or at least that you could to waterloo in the olden days) but had completely forgotten, so thanks for that reminder too. although i was once convinced to book onto a specific train much later than the one i needed because 'you have to get through passport control'. i had completely forgotten that you do this before you get on the eurostar, in france, not when you get back to the UK. i was most annoyed when i realised...

here's your answer re overnight train to rome then - not available till december. damn!