Comments on: Avoid these common tourist mistakes in Italy

By: Craig Nelson

Craig Nelson — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 13:48:25 +0000

Hi All,
Thanks for sharing your rental car story. Sorry to hear it was such a misadventure. This is really helpful information for our readers.

By: -al wanamaker

-al wanamaker — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 15:40:55 +0000

what not to do in Italy—be very careful when renting a car, especially from local or smaller agencies. we rented a diesel Audi from Sixt. very nice car and no problems except a gas station put gas in instead of diesel. i called the “help” number at Sixt and got NO help. we were outside of Naples and had to be in Rome for our flt home. They had no repllacement car that would accommodate 4 adults and luggage. They couldn’t locate another car for at least 2 days. They advised us to take a taxi–250Euros, to Rome. Which is what we had to do. And we had to pay and got no reimbursement. Needless to say we’ll NEVER rent or recommend Sixt. And those “help” numbers in Italy are rarely staffed with people who have a command of English.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 10:20:19 +0000

The most costly mistake we made on our first trip to Italy was failing to validate train tickets/passes–we’d jumped on a train at the last minute without stopping at the yellow box or (in the case of the passes) signing the back, and the conductor made us pay a large fine on the spot when he came through. Even on subsequent visits, we’ve had the occasional problem with the trains when we bought them from the machines.

We recommend buying at the wicket, despite the lines, unless you’re absolutely sure you’re getting what you want (we bought tickets at the machine in one station without realizing that we were purchasing tickets for a train that left from a different station, and by the time we realized it, we’d nearly missed our train; it was late, as trains often are in Italy, so we didn’t, but we had to scramble). We speak fairly good Italian, so I have to think that the rules and the ticketing procedure are just a little more confusing than you might think.

One last tip: watch out for jumping onto an Italo Tren (it’s a fairly new line) when you’ve bought a ticket for a Trenitalia train. They’re not identical, but if you’re rushing and you see a train on your track going to your destination, you actually CAN make that mistake. We did, and it cost us both a fine AND the price of two sets of tickets.