Travelling on
Trains in Italy
For those that has
never travel around in Italy on their trains may have some worries how to get
around. Where to buy the tickets, how to buy, should we buy in advance or not.
Reading Internet posts talk a lot about validating your tickets and the
penalties involved. This applied to me before our trip and in the end all when
well and so I would hope this short simple section can help travellers like us.
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| Milano Centrale Train Station |
Validating Your
Tickets
Tickets that you
buy over the counter allows you to travel on the scheduled train and up to a
few hours in case you miss the train and there is another similar service
running the same way. Before you board the train, you need to validate your
ticket at those small terminals usually located near the platform and sometimes
close to the ticket sales counter. For one place, we couldn’t find it on the
platform and need to walk all the way back to the underpass that links the
different platforms to get it validated. The tickets has a QR code and once you
slot in the ticket into the terminal, wait for the printing sound and the green
light at the top of the terminal to complete before taking the tickets out.
After that you are good to board the train.
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| Tickets purchased over the counter. |
Booking Tickets
Online
In our case, we
book all the tickets online for those that we need to travel for those days
that we need to move around. The ones we get over the counter was those few
stops type and we were just visiting the nearby places. For the major
travelling, we book online. From our home in Singapore we book the tickets
online. There is even a Singapore version of the train Italia website that we
book. One of the advantage of booking
online is that the tickets need not be validated. You can just board the train
based on the booked schedule. Just need to show the conductor if ask for. There
are some discounts for tickets booked online. One main disadvantage is that
these tickets purchased online cannot be cancelled. So one has to make sure
their travel plans are confirmed before booking. Initially I wanted the
flexibility to change if need to but when the date came closer, we just book
everything from the website.
With these
pre-booked tickets, we don’t have to queue to get tickets, especially the big
station like Milan Centrale, we try to avoid to get tickets in such busy and
crowded station. And by booking online, you just need to specify your location
and the destination to go and the system will plan all the transfer for you. The
waiting time for transfer will be minimum and you can skip the hassle part of
manually planning which time slot of the train to catch.
After you have have
your booking online, print the tickets out, print copies as well in case you
lost them. Some of conductors do allow passengers to display their booking on
their mobile phone or tablet. Environmental friendly yes, but instructions on
the website and booking says to print in A4 size paper. SO to be safe just
follow what was stated.
Getting Around
From Malepensa
Airport to Switzerland
If one was to look
at the map, Milan is the nearest big city to the Switzerland border. Some may
ask what is the fastest and best route to get into Switzerland, esp the border
villages of Zermatt, Saas Fee, or Lugano. There are 2 options, purely train and
a mix of train and buses. A simple comparison shows the latter being faster way
to get to say Brig Switzerland.
From Zermatt to
Lake Como
The only way for
tourist in and out of Zermatt is by the train. Even for bus tour group would
have to alight at the last town that has road access for bus and transfer to
the train to get into the village of Zermatt. We left our hotel after breakfast
and took the train from the Zermatt station to Brig for the intercity train
that would bring us back to Milan. Zermatt is a alpine village in a valley and
the first train station that allow you to get to other parts of Switzerland is
Visp, but if one wants to go to Italy, then Brig will the station where there
are trains running from big cities and towns in Switzerland into Italy.
The fastest way
from Zermatt to Lake Como is to take the train from Zermatt to Brig and change
to the intercity city train all the way to Milan Centrale Station, and from
there to take the regional train from Milan Centrale to Varenna Esino station at
the shores of Lake Como. This is the only village station of Lake Como that is
accessible by train and so many tourists will come to this station to take the
ferry to get to the lakeside town of Menaggio and Bellagio which many use them
as base to visit and explore Lake Como.
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| Milano Centrale Train station |
Intercity trains
crossing the border between Switzerland and Italy (maybe applies to other
European countries as well) will be subjected to customs officer checks. They
will check your passports and ask you some generic questions. This wasn’t the
case when we travelled from the Italian border town of Domodosola into Brig of
Switzerland. Maybe it was a weekend or maybe it was just random checks.
We started off from
Zermatt station around 8:45am and reached Milan Central around 11:30pm, waited
for the regional train at 1:20pm and reached Varenna around 2:20pm. From the
Varenna Esino station, it was a short walk to the ferry pier but with some
heavy luggage can be a moderate workout if you are carry backpacks like us. The
ferry takes about 20mins on the lake waters to get to Bellagio which was where
we were based.
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| Varenna-Esino Station (Lake Como) |
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| Lakeside town of Bellagio |
Lake Como to Cinque
Terre
Not much to write
or to guide. The fastest way is simple to head back from Varenna Esino station
at Lake Como, back to Milan Centrale station and transfer to the regional train
to Genoa and subsequently to any of the 5 towns. Cinque Terre actually means 5 towns.
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| Riomaggiore station, Cinque Terre |
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