Monterosso al Mare Travel Forum

I have been trying to book a train from monterosso to florence leaving on sunday 1 July in the morning. I have looked at every train timetable I can find but there doesn't seem to be any way to do this. Trenitalia only shows a single schedule (via Pisa) late sunday afternoon. I can't believe it isn't possible to do this trip in the morning - can anyone tell me where to look pls??

As we often say here, look at the same day of the week in the next week for your planning. Train schedules more than 60 days out are unreliable (and often missing) from the website.

It's OK, train schedules don't change that much over the course of the year...but when you look at the same routing on next Sunday (April 22), you will see a satisfying number of solutions...if a lot of changes (in La Spezia or Pisa or wherever)...

P.S. I see no reason to book a ticket now for a trip that is not until July...be cool, you have tons of time...

Bill

There is no reservation possible for regional trains. You can buy ticket a few minutes before departure.

Thanks Bill

I did look at the week prior etc but again saw no morning trains. Does this mean there are only regional (non-bookable) trains on this route on sunday mornings??

regards
Bill

"I did look at the week prior etc but again saw no morning trains. Does this mean there are only regional (non-bookable) trains on this route on sunday mornings?? "

The week prior to what? July 1st? That's still too far out.

Look at April 29th (a week from tomorrow). You will see a train leaving from Monterosso at 07:35, arriving in La Spezia at 07:49, and another train departing La Spezia at 08:52 and arriving in Florence at 10:24.

Another train leaves Monterosso at 09:03, changes in Pisa at 10:18-10:29, and the next train arrives in Florence at 11:33.

However, perhaps your concern is trying to book a trip all the way through. Well, in each of the above cases, there is a regional train involved (R and iR), on which you cannot make a reservation - simply put, if you have a ticket, you can get on even if you stand. Of course, regional trains tend to be short trips (Monterosso to La Spezia is less than 15 minutes), so that really doesn't matter.

However, there is nothing stopping you from booking part of the trip...you just have to change your starting and stopping point. For example, let's use the 09:03 departure. This is ICPlus 645 from Monterosso to Pisa. You can make a reservation on this train (although there may be unreserved seats as well on an ICPlus), just enter "Monterosso" and "Pisa" as your trip. You will see that you can now buy (and reserve) a seat on this train - hmmmn, it looks like this ICPlus has only reserved seats. Once you are in Pisa, you just catch the next train to Florence - they are quite frequent, yet probably regional trains that you can't reserve.

hahaha, since I started this note, they have updated the schedule. Now the "solution" at 09:03 changes in Viareggio, not Pisa. And the train from Viareggio to Florence stops at Florence Rifredi, which is not the main station but is about 2 kilometers north of it (ie, in town and easy taxi distance to the center).

This should be an object lesson - the trenitalia website shows "solutions", not all the trains that are possible. For that, you need to go to my Italy page, I think, where I have a link that enables you to see all the trains arriving and departing any station in Italy (and in Europe, perhaps) in any 1 hour period.

However, the "solutions" leave out solutions that appear to be pointless - that is, if there are two trains from Monterosso that would connect to the same train in Pisa for Florence, it would leave off the first train from Monterosso to Pisa because the layover would be longer (i.e., the algorithm solves for the shorter layover). Makes sense?

Anyway, it looks like you will have an unreserved and a reserved segment...but this is Sunday morning...one has to believe that when you arrive in Monterosso, that before you leave the station, you buy your tickets for the Monterosso to Florence trip the next day or day after...

Bill