Difficulty reading train time table - Gluten free food

AlanBall

Member
Hi,
Wow what a fantastic forum, with a wealth of information, congratulations to the moderators. My wife and myself (pensioners from New Zealand) will be staying in Viareggio for a week as a side trip we are making to the UK for a wedding in May. We were in Italy in 2006 but on a tour, this time we will be under our own steam using public transport. I have gleaned a lot of information about transport from this site and downloaded the PDF of the rail routes and times, but I am not at all sure how to read the train time table. Could anyone help please.

I also have a question about food, my wife eats gluten free food (Italy of all places!!) as far as possible. On our last trip the tour director manage to arrange a selection of gluten free food with the hotels we stayed at, but my wife is worried weather we will be able to find shops and food outlets that sell gluten free food as we will be staying at a B&B hotel. If Any has any information on this subject it would be most appreciated. (Should this question be on the food part of he Forum?)

Alan Ball
 
Ciao Alan and welcome to our forum!

We're glad to be of help and offer suggestions on anything you might have doubts on, so don't worry and post all your questions!

As for train time tables - you should always also check online since those will have the most up-to-date schedules (are also more complete and are also a little easier to read).
You can check them out here: www.trenitalia.com
At the top of the page there is English link to change language, click on that right away.
Use the search form to the left of the page. Indicate your starting city and end city - for example, let's do Viareggio and Florence
The default date and time is around what the time you are searching, so if you want to see a complete daily schedule, you can put a random date but make sure you put something like 7 or 8am so it starts looking at early trains. I entered 7 so the results show trains at
7:14
7:15
8:09
8:25
9:09
just on the first page of results, you can click on "next" to see later trains.
Now I am sure you'll understand the schedules better on here than on the PDFs which only show the trains that run down the coast between La Spezia and Pisa. The website shows trains that go from Viareggio to all destinations.
So each row here has info on each train that can take you to Florence.
To see more details for each train, look to the far right of each row - see the radio button at the very end of the row that falls under the "select" column? Click on that for one (I selected the 7:14 train) and then on the red button links below click on the one that says "details by selection". Additional info on that train shows up below.
If you once again select "info" at the very end of the row, more details show up further down. All those are the stops the train makes.... you can see there are several. It means that this train in particular makes all those stops in Lucca, Montecatini Terme, Pistoia and Prato. Which means you can use this train to travel to those locations as well.
The 8:25 train on the other hand reaches Florence passing through Pisa so it is a train you can also use to get to Pisa (this one in particular requires you change trains in Pisa to continue on to Florence).

I hope my explanation has been of help and not confused you!! let me know ok?


As for gluten-free, you should know that the term in Italian for celiacs is called "celiaci" where both c's are pronounced soft as in church or should - so pronounced like che-li-a-chee - and gluten-free is "senza glutine".
So you need to look for places that serve "celiaci" or meals "senza glutine". I found two websites dedicated to listing restaurants for celiaci and another with restaurants and shops that have products for celiacs disease. Our local supermarket (Coop) has an area in an aisle with gluten-free products so it seems that more people are aware and seek to offer solutions for anyone needing to each gluten free. So if you also want to seek some products, you can likely find them at a local supermarket or even at a pharmacy (they'll be more expensive there though).

These are the two websites - you might to make a list of listings for the specific places you're thinking of visiting during your week.

http://www.ristorantiperceliaci.net/cerca/ristorantiperceliaci_toscana.php
http://www.mangiaresenzaglutine.it/ristorazione/index.php

For Viareggio, I found 3 restaurants:

Locanda Milu
Via Regia 10 - Viareggio (LU)
Tel. 0584 47446

Marechiaro Ristorante Pizzeria
V.le Europa 14 - Viareggio (LU)
Tel. 0584 391244

A Casa Mia
Via Aurelia Sud, 287/b - Viareggio (LU)
Tel. 0584/388448

Feel free to ask anything else that you need, we'll try to help! :) Hope you're enjoying planning your vacation to Italy - you'll do fine on your own :)
 
Hi Lourdes,

Thanks for reply, I was a bit slow getting back on the forum, although I am 71 I am still working 4 days a week and it's been quite busy in the office, and I have spent a lot of time on the internet at night looking for accomodation for me and my wife, and trying to decide the best area to stay in.

Your time and information is much appreciated my wife will be pleased about the gluten free information.

Regards

Alan
 
accommodation in Viareggio area

Don't worry about taking time to reply! If you need any other suggestions, do let us know!

If you're still looking for accommodation in the Viareggio area, you could take a look at www.tuscanyaccommodation.com - the map can be useful to browse and find something in the area you're interested in.
 
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