Italian High Speed Train: Rome to Venice

We needed to go from Athens, Greece, to Venice, Italy, but this proved more difficult than we had anticipated. We originally purchased a flight from Athens to Venice on Austrian Airlines with a layover in Vienna, but Austrian Airlines canceled one leg of the ticket (Vienna to Venice) without informing us and without refunding any money. We realized this while in Greece and it was a fiasco trying to get Austrian Airlines to refund the money (but that's a different story). We attempted to purchase different flights from Athens to Venice, but Travelocity sold us tickets on a defunct airline (Alitalia Airlines); I don't know why there were still selling tickets for that airline that was known to be defunct. We could only find outrageously priced flights from Athens to Venice, but then realized there were numerous reasonably priced flights from Athens to Rome and that there were numerous train connections from Rome to Venice.

We flew on an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Rome and then went to the Rome Termini Train Station.

Treating the train like we are use to treating flights, we arrrived at Rome Termini more than two hours before our train's scheduled departure time.

It turns out that we need not have arrived at Rome Termini so far in advance because there are no security lines, no baggage to check (we took it onto the train car ourselves), no long line waiting to board (each car has its own set of doors instead of everyone queuing for the same door), and tickets are not checked until after the train is underway.

The whole train boarding process is so much more efficient than flying that one needs only arrive about thirty minutes before the scheduled departure time. In fact, the huge electronic sign at Rome Termini did not even say which platform our train would be on until about twenty minutes before scheduled departure time!

Because we had so much extra time at Rome Termini, we ate lunch at Antica Focacceria S. Francesco.

Once the platform was shown on the electronic sign, there was no time to waste! It was refreshing, compared to air travel, to be able to board the train without any lengthy lines and be moving in just a matter of minutes! An attendant came by after we started moving to check our tickets, give us a disinfecting wipe, snack, and drink.

The seats on the train are more spacious than coach seats on most airplanes and the luggage racks had plenty of space for our luggage.

We started with very few people in our particular car, but did pick up and drop off some passengers at various stops at major Italian cities between Rome and Venice.

This sign about Firenze (Florence) being our next stop showed us traveling at 180 km/hour (~112 miles per hour).

When Venezia (Venice) was going to be our next stop, we were traveling at 202 km/hour (~125 miles per hour).

Although we had not planned it to happen this way originally, it turned out that arriving in Venice via train was preferrable to flying there because the Venice train station (Venice Santa Lucia) was very near our hotel (Hotel Principe Venice in the Cannaregio district on the Grand Canal).

Although we ended up figuring it out, I wish that we had read A beginner's guide to Train travel in Italy ... beforehand because it would have answered many of our questions as first-time riders. This was our first time riding a European high-speed train and we loved the convenience, comfort, and efficiency of riding Trenitalia's Frecciargento 9424 from Rome to Venice.