I have traveled around Italy in a variety of ways -- trains, planes, boats, buses, metro, rental cars, and good old fashioned walking. There is definitely a lot of value to being flexible about the way you can get around, depending on where you are and where you're going.
When in Rome, you can get to a lot of the sites simply by walking between them, and a great deal of the most noteworthy ones by riding the metro. Tip #1:
Roma Pass
* Buy a Roma Pass when visiting Rome! You can find lots of videos, articles, or blog posts about whether it makes sense financially to buy the Roma Pass, but I have learned from experience that it is definitely worth it! You end up using it a lot more than you thought you would. I recommend buying the 48 hour Roma Pass if you're there for a couple days, and using the one free entry that comes with the pass to get into the Colosseum, because then you also get to go to the Forum and Palatine Hill -- three sites for one price. You still have to pay a $2 fee to book your tickets, but it's worth it. Be sure you reserve your time at the Colosseum first before purchasing the Roma Pass, because the time you want might be booked already. You can purchase a Roma Pass here on their official site:
I had a lot of questions about the Roma Pass, so here's some important things to note:
- If you purchase your Roma Pass online, which I recommend, you have to pick it up at one of their Infopoints. When you purchase your pass online, it has you select a particular Infopoint that you plan to pick it up at. You can, however, pick up your card at a different Infopoint. The reason I recommend purchasing it online ahead of time is that once we did not do this, and opted to buy it from a vendor in Italy. They did not understand what I was asking for, and I ended up with the wrong type of pass. Buy it online and pick it up at an Infopoint in Rome. I selected the Infopoint near Castel Sant'Angelo, which is a pretty easy infopoint to find. You do, however, need to pay attention to the hours it is open. You'll also have to pay for a ride to the Infopoint to pick up the pass in the first place. This is the one downside of buying the Roma Pass online, but I still recommend it. I intended to pick up my Roma Pass at Fiumicino Airport, which is located in Terminal Three, but we were in too big of a hurry to track it down so opted to just pick it up the next day at Sant'Angelo.
- You can pick up your Roma Pass before you intend to use it, as long as you don't activate it yet. In our case, we were flying into Rome, spending a couple days there, going on a 7-day Mediterranean cruise, and then exploring Rome with our Roma Pass. I picked up our Roma Passes at an Infopoint when we first arrived, but just kept them in my suitcase until after our cruise, at which point I activated them simply by tapping them on the metro reader.
Buying a Roma Pass will save you time and money in the long run, because you won't have to buy individual tickets every time you want to ride a metro or bus, you can just swipe your card and go!
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| Castel Sant'Angello on the left, with the Tourist Infopoint where you pick up your Roma Pass on the right |
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| The Tourist Infopoint by Castel Sant'Angelo |
Train
* When traveling between Italian cities on the mainland of Rome, train is probably the best way to go! We traveled by train from Venice to Florence, and then from Florence to Rome, and we also traveled from Rome to Palermo! Our train went over the water, which was pretty fun to watch. Trains are fast and stress-free. Seating is not assigned - at least not on the less expensive trips that we took - so you might have to wait for people to get off to get seats next to each other. I purchased my train tickets through Trainline or Trenitalia.
One big down-side to train travel, however, is strikes! We were in Italy during a train strike and needed to get from the cruise ship port in Civitavecchia to Rome. Our train was not listed among the "guaranteed trains" on the Trenitalia website, so we had to rent a car to drive the hour from the port to the city.
Planned Train Strikes in Italy
What To Do in the Event of a Strike
Luckily, we weren't out much money for our train tickets because they are relatively inexpensive. Despite the large possibility of being in Italy during a strike, I would still recommend train travel between cities. Just try to be flexible. The view from the train windows is incredible, and train travel is stress-free, once you're on the train.
Just compare prices and buy the fastest trip for the best price. There's one very important train to know about when visiting Rome! The Leonardo Express! This is the train that goes straight from the Rome Airport to Roma Termini.
You can purchase your Leonardo Express tickets online before you come, but I would recommend waiting and buying them at the time you plan to leave. The train leaves every 15 minutes and is a 32 minute train ride. Be sure to board the correct train! The first time we went to Italy, we weren't careful about reading which train we were boarding, and we ended up on the wrong train instead of the Leonardo Express. Also note that you can take a later Leonardo Express if you miss the one you purchased a ticket to ride, but you cannot ride an earlier train. We waited for over an hour once, because we'd bought later tickets ahead of time, and none of the train mangers would let us ride early. Don't ride a train that you don't have a ticket for, or you might end up with pretty hefty fines when you get caught.
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| The Leonardo Express |
Ferry
When we went from Palermo to Cagliari, we slept on an overnight ferry. Our ferry was through Tirrenia:
Now it appears that only Grimaldi offers ferry rides from Palermo to Cagliari:
It wasn't as fancy as a cruise line, but it was fine for one overnight boat ride. We each had a cabin with a window in it. My son and daughter-in-law were traveling with us, and unfortunately, their room didn't have hot water in the shower! In order to shower, they had to figure out a way to move hot water from the sink into the shower! Our room was fine and we had no idea at the time that their room had such issues!
When visiting Venice, you do ride a boat everywhere you go, unless you're walking! Get a city pass and ride the vaporettos everywhere. They're like buses on water. We rode them to reach certain destinations, but we also sometimes sat in them to ride around the island just for fun.
Car
* DO NOT RENT A CAR IN ROME! Having said that, we have rented a car in Rome four times now. We always used Hertz, which was mostly pain-free. You can easily get around Rome without a car, and it's actually quite a pain to have a car, because then you have to figure out where to park it. One night we were going to a concert, we parked our rental car at a large parking lot and then walked a mile to the concert in the dark, and then back again. We should have just parked our car for the night at the parking garage near our hotel and walked from there (or taken the metro!). The one exception to renting a car in Rome, and the reason that we have done it every time, is to attend the Rome Temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is very complicated to reach the temple by bus (although we have done it - it just was confusing and time-consuming), and it's expensive by taxi. I have not tried using Uber in Rome yet, but I might try that next time. Bottom line is, having a car in Rome is a huge pain, and can even be dangerous, because drivers in Rome are pretty crazy.
When traveling between cities, it might make sense to rent a car, and can be beautiful to be able to reach some of the sites that trains won't take you. If you do decide to rent a car, we used Hertz. We did receive a very large traffic ticket after our first visit to Italy, because James had driven the wrong direction on a one-way street for a short time, and the traffic camera caught his license plate. This traffic ticket of over $200 arrived in the mail from Hertz months after our trip. Another down-side is that you need to return the car with a full tank of gas or else you'll be charged a hefty fee for them to fill up the car. On our most recent trip to Italy in 2024, we filled up the car a few miles from the Rome Hertz, but it wasn't quite at the full line when we turned it in, so they charged us $30 to put $5 worth of gas in the car! Gas stations are not like in the US - they are on the side of the highway, or busy road, and there are only a couple pumps at each one. Sometimes an employee fills the car for you, or sometimes you fill it yourself. Also, some pumps only take cash. The gas station was one of the few places that my credit card was rejected in Europe. Once you add up the pros and cons of renting a car, you will probably agree with me that if there's any other way to travel to your destination, definitely don't rent a car!!
Air
* Flying between Italian cities is usually pretty affordable -- we flew between Sardinia and Rome on Alitalia, which is now ITA Airlines. Ryanair is another inexpensive airline to fly between cities in Italy. My son and his family live in Belgium, and they fly all over Europe because they're able to find inexpensive flights between European countries all the time.
When flying into Rome, we usually fly into FCO - Leonardo da Vinci - Fiumicino Airport. If you have a layover in the Paris airport, keep in mind that you will be required to go through security again, even though it's a connecting flight, and they require you to remove all of your liquids and electronics from your bags. I forgot that I'd brought a Kindle in my carry-on, so my bag was flagged. This resulted in us almost missing our connecting flight because we had to wait in line for them to search my bag and conduct tests on its contents. The Rome airport, however, didn't require us to take anything out of our bags when going through security - not even my laptop computer. Another difficult thing to keep in mind if your layover is in the Paris airport is that their screens listing flights are somewhat hard to decipher, at least for a country girl like me. On one of our layovers we spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out which gate our flight was leaving from. On our trip home we checked in at the Rome airport instead of online, and were given boarding passes for both of our flights, so we had a much easier time finding our departure gate in the Paris airport. We also were sure to allow ourselves plenty of time to figure out where to go in both airports.
We enjoy doing overnight layovers in cities like Paris or Amsterdam. In Amsterdam we stayed at a hotel near the airport, but in Paris we stayed at a hotel right next to the Eiffel Tower. The downside of an overnight layover is, of course, transportation to your hotel, but the upside is they keep your checked bag at the airport and send it to your destination. We were grateful not to be pulling our checked bags around Paris with us, especially since their metro is not nearly as mobility-friendly as the Rome metro is (lots and lots of stairs!).
So far we have always flown Delta to reach Italy, which partners with Air France or KLM. Delta serves two pretty good meals, as well as a snack on the flight, and has in-flight entertainment. Air France doesn't do the same, but those flights are short. For my next trip to Europe I am trying American Airlines and will report on how the amenities compare to Delta.
The last tip I have to share about transportation is also about packing. I have done it both ways, and I can tell you that you will be relieving yourself of a lot of headaches if you only bring a carry-on and don't check a bag for your trip to Italy! It's not worth it! Pack the essentials in your carry-on and save yourself from having to lug your big suitcase around everywhere you go. So many times we had to check our bags at the train station because we didn't yet have a hotel, or if we were lucky and did have a hotel, we had to make a trip there to drop our bags off before going to see the sites. A giant suitcase is a headache that you just do not need in Italy! Pack light and save on stress!
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| Our first trip to Italy started off with an adventure when Micah's bags were searched by SLC airport personnel. He brought 2 packages for missionaries in the Italy Rome mission and unfortunately their mothers had sent peanut butter, molasses, and teriyaki sauce. The agent opened up both of the packages and removed the items in question. Micah delivered the packages to the mission office in Rome and explained why they were opened. I sure hope those missionaries didn't really need the teriyaki sauce and peanut butter. :) |
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| Micah was embarrassed. |
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| Heading to our gate |
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| Hanging out in the airport |
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| Our plane waiting for us to board. |
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| On our delta flight, straight from SLC to Paris. We went over a 8 hour time difference. We left at 5 pm and landed at 10:30 am Paris time. |
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| Our view from the sky |
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| Beautiful Rocky Mountains |
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| We watched movies on the plane. I didn't sleep at all. I was REALLY tired by the time we got there. |
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| The Paris airport. It was gloomy and rainy in Paris. The airport is very big. We went through security again and then got a Paris stamp on our passports. By the time we found our gate for the connecting flight it was almost time to board the plane. Incidentally, every time I have landed at the Paris airport it has been gloomy and rainy there! |
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| Our brief time in Paris |
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| Our Paris plane. We flew Air France for this leg of the journey. I had paid to select our seats and then the flight attendant gave mine and James' seats away to some girls who wanted to sit together. I tried to explain that I wanted to sit by my husband but she was unmoved. When I got home I called Delta and they gave me a refund for what I had paid to select the seats. |
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| Landed in Venice |
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| We rode a bus from the Venice airport to the bus station on the island of Venice. |
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