The train is why a France and Italy itinerary can be ambitious without being exhausting. Paris to Avignon in under three hours. Rome to Florence in ninety minutes. Lisbon to Porto along the coast in under three. No security line, no baggage carousel, city centre to city centre, with countryside going past the window instead of cloud.
But European rail is not one system. It is a dozen national railways with different rules about reservations, luggage, ticket validity and what happens when you miss a connection. Here is what matters.
High-speed trains require a reserved seat
On the fast long-distance services — France's TGV and inOui, Italy's Frecciarossa and Italo, Spain's AVE, the Eurostar — your ticket is for a specific train, at a specific time, in a specific seat. You cannot take the earlier one because you arrived early, and a missed train can mean buying a new ticket.
Regional trains are the opposite: turn up, buy, board, sit anywhere. This is the single most common source of confusion, and it is why I book the long legs in advance and leave the short local hops flexible.
Book early for price, not availability
Fares behave like airline fares. The same Paris–Avignon seat can cost three times as much a week out as it does two months out. Advance tickets are usually non-refundable and non-changeable, so the trade-off is money against flexibility — which is exactly the kind of judgement I would rather make on your behalf once your dates are firm.
Rail passes are rarely the answer
A Eurail pass sounds romantic and, for the way most of my clients travel — three or four long journeys in two weeks — point-to-point tickets are almost always cheaper. Worse, the pass still requires paid seat reservations on exactly the trains you most want, and those reservation quotas sell out. Passes make sense for long, improvised, many-country trips. They rarely make sense for a planned two-region itinerary.
Connection times: the thing that ruins days
Twenty minutes between trains looks fine on a screen and is not, particularly in Paris, where different services leave from entirely different stations across the city — Gare du Nord, Gare de Lyon and Montparnasse are half an hour apart in traffic, not a corridor walk.
My rules: a minimum of forty-five minutes for any same-station change, two hours when the change involves crossing a city, and never a train connecting to a same-day long-haul flight home. Strikes in France and Italy are announced in advance and are survivable when you have margin; they are ruinous when you do not.
Luggage, platforms and validation
- You carry your own bags. There are no porters, luggage racks fill quickly, and steps onto the train are steep. Two medium cases beat three large ones every time.
- Platforms are announced late. In Italy and Spain the platform often appears ten to fifteen minutes before departure. Wait in the hall, watch the board, then move.
- Validate paper tickets where required. On Italian regional trains an unvalidated paper ticket earns a fine. Digital tickets on your phone avoid this entirely, which is how I issue them.
- Sit in the right car. Long trains sometimes split, and the platform signage tells you where your carriage will stop.
Is first class worth it?
On high-speed trains, usually yes, and not for the reason people expect. The seats are marginally better; the real gain is a calmer car, more room for bags, and a reliable spot for two people to sit together facing a table. On journeys under two hours, second class is perfectly comfortable. On a three-hour leg with luggage, the upgrade is modest and buys you an easier afternoon.
When the train is not the right answer
Trains are superb between cities and unhelpful in the countryside. Provence, Tuscany, the Douro Valley and the Loire all need a car or a private driver once you arrive. And for Greece, domestic flights and ferries do the work the railway does elsewhere. The best itineraries mix all three: rail for the long legs, a driver for the beautiful roads, a boat where the coast is the point.
When I build a trip, every one of these legs is booked, sequenced and cross-checked against the rest of the day — so travel days feel like part of the holiday rather than the price of it.