My Italian Train Experiences

The very day I landed into Florence, I had made arrangements to travel from Florence train station to La Spezia, so that I could spend my first couple of nights near Cinque Terre.  I arrived at the Florence train station and immediately lined up at one of the automated ticket machines to purchase a ticket.  It was 5:26pm at that point and the next train to La Spezia departed at 5:28pm.  Obviously, I didn’t want to risk it, since I was in an unfamiliar place and I figured it would probably be 5:28pm before I finished the transaction on the machine.  It was kind of strange that it was still letting people purchase tickets for a train set to depart in 2 minutes time.

I decided to purchase tickets for the 6:28pm train instead, which meant that I had an hour to kill. The Florence train station really isn’t that interesting and only consisted of a couple of cafes and a McDonald’s. I didn’t want to venture outside of the station either, as I had my suitcase with me and thought it would be too much of a hassle.  In the end, I purchased something to eat and then proceeded to wait for my train. 

I noticed that my train was set to arrive 10 minutes late, which wasn’t a big deal.  A little later, the delay increased to 15 minutes, which was still okay.  After a little while longer, the delay became 25 minutes, then 40 minutes and then finally it showed as cancelled.  This was when I started panicking as I had purchased connecting tickets (Florence to Pisa, then Pisa to La Spezia), and I wasn’t sure what would happen with my second ticket.  Thankfully, the lady at the customer service booth spoke some English and was able to help me change my tickets so that I could catch a (much) later train from Pisa to La Spezia.

When I finally found the train I was supposed to board, it was packed full of people (likely due to the earlier cancelled train) and I ended up standing by the doorway for the entire train ride.  It was probably around 30 degrees outside and the trains didn’t have air conditioning, which made for a bit of an unpleasant ride, especially since there were so many people crammed into the little doorway area.

I had previously told the owner of the B&B in La Spezia that I would arrive by 8:00pm, but with this train incident, I likely wouldn’t arrive until at least 10:00pm.  Thankfully, there was a young lady on the train who lent me her phone and I was able to call and speak to the owner of my B&B to let her know of my late arrival.  I had previously heard horror stories about owners leaving and not waiting around for you if you didn’t check in at the specified time, so in the back of my mind I was thinking that I would be sleeping at the train station my first night in Italy!

Once my first train arrived into Pisa, I had an hour to kill before my train to La Spezia.  Just like earlier, this train was delayed as well and an hour turned into an hour and a half before it finally arrived.  By this point, I was tired after a full day of traveling from Canada to Holland to Italy and I had already learned to expect very little of Italian trains when it came to punctuality.  Thankfully though, this was the worst of my Italian train experience.  During my 9 days in Italy, I would take 5 more intercity trains and all of them were (relatively) on time.  I guess the Florence to La Spezia experience was a bit of an anomaly, but as it was my very first time on Italian trains, it didn’t leave a very good impression.