Transportation in Italy

         Tomorrow, it will be a month until I go home. I feel all weird saying that because I swear it was just midterms week. My study abroad journey is almost over.

          This past weekend, I went to Rome. That is an adventure that I will have to tell you about a different time. It involved little sleep and lots of sight seeing.

           I’m going to explain about the types of transportation here in Italy.

           

Vespa

Bike

           For daily activities throughout town, most people opt to walk or ride a bike. I walk but study abroad students do have the option to rent bikes for the semester. Most Florentines have Vespa’s because it is the most convenient. For living in the city, there are many streets that are narrow and it is hard to get around, if you have a car. There are people who have smaller cars that look like smart cars or hybrids but those are less common and the least common of all is a regular sized car. The driver has to pay very close attention to turn very carefully and adjust themselves on the smaller streets to make sure they aren’t turning into a building or crowd of people.

Taxi

           There are taxis that you can take but taxis cannot be hailed or stopped suddenly like you’ve seen in the movies. You must go to a taxi stand or call ahead of time for one to come pick you up. In Italy, they are not allowed to stop on the street and pick up someone. It is actually illegal. 

           For day trips through tour companies, the group usually takes a regular coach bus. The differences between coach buses here and in the states are: the bathroom is located in the middle of the bus instead of being in the very back. It is located directly in front of a second door that passengers can use to get in an out. Also it is a rule that the bus driver cannot leave passengers on the bus unattended so when we stop at rest stops, every one must get off and the bus is locked until the bus driver come back. The space to put your backs overhead of you is also significantly smaller. So small to the point where your backpack does not fit.

Local Bus

            A couple of weeks ago, I took the local bus. In order to get a bus ticket you must either go to the tabacchi store, which is like almost the equivalent of going to a small convenient store, or you can buy one on the bus. The benefit of going to the tabacchi store is the bus ticket only costs 1.20 euro. If you buy it directly on the bus, it costs 2. Conveniently, the store was a 3-minute walk away from my apartment and just across the street was the bus stop that I needed to get on. Once you get on the bus you need to stick your ticket into a machine and get a stamp, which will validate your ticket. If you forget, you will be fined 240 euro and that is only if you pay on the bus right then and there. If you don’t have the money on you and get off the bus, the fine goes up almost doubling in cost. You can also choose between taking a city center bus or a regional bus that will take you out of the city center towards the outer cities.

             Rome was my first time that I took the train system here in Italy. The trains are what people take in between different cities in Rome.  You can buy your tickets online, at a ticket machine or at the ticket counter at the train station. Depending on the speed of the train determines how much your ticket costs. The most expensive train ticket from Florence to Rome gets you to Rome in an hour and 10 minutes. The slowest and least expensive train gets you to Rome in 3 hours and 30 minutes. People who take the faster train are usually are going somewhere for work.

Car

            Once I got to Rome, I took the metro. Unfortunately, Florence doesn’t have one but then again Florence is small enough to walk mostly everywhere within 20 minutes. The metro is pretty much just like the subway in New York. The only difference is they only have two lines, A and B. It’s not very big at all. You buy a ticket just as you would get a metro card for the subway at the ticket machine. Good news, you don’t have to validate it. You could walk everywhere in Rome but to get to some places would be an hour or more walk.  

Vespa Parking

            
The biggest thing that you have to remember about taking the train and the buses in Italy is to validate your ticket. To validate your train ticket, you must validate it before you get on the train. There will be validation machines every couple of platforms just make sure to stick it in there and it will print a number on the end of your ticket. Over the past week, I rode the train four times and the conductors only looked at it one or two times out of four.  I ended up going to Pompeii for a day trip from Rome. If you end up on the train without a ticket or a validated ticket, you will have to pay a fine and the same rules apply, as if you were on a bus. If you pay immediately, the fine is significantly less then when you get off the train. So don’t forget to validate your ticket and you should be fine.

            This is a run down of how transportation works throughout Italy. The train is really convenient to use if you need to get to other cities. I wish that we had something like that in the states. Could you imagine taking public transportation around the states? Could you imagine taking the train to Mount Pleasant instead of driving from your hometown? I know I would enjoy it way more.