Barcelona to Venice via the Alps.

Hello.

Just after a little info for our up coming trip in October. My wife and I will be taking the train from Barcelona to Venice. Obviously this is quite a distance. So with three days to make the trip, the plan is to break it up with a two night stop over somewhere in France or Italy near or in the Alps. The quickest route would be via Nice, however already been to Nice and I love the mountains so something with more mountainous scenery would be a preference. One idea was somewhere like Grenoble or similar. Any ideas greatly accepted.

Thanks.

Damian.

I'd go through Gap, Embrun and Briançon, entering Italy via SS24 and E70 (east of Turin). This is a beautiful road, although it definitely requires some mountain driving experience.

Oh wait, you're going by train?!

That makes things a lot more interesting. There are basically 3 options:

• Nice - Ventimiglia by the Atlantic coast. This is the best-known route, but it won't go into the mountains
• Nice - Cuneo. This is a slow train (RE22949, via Sospel and Tende; other options with a change of trains in Breil sur Roya) with a very nice itinerary. It takes 3 hours; from Cuneo, there are various train options to Venice via Turin
• Grenoble - Chambéry - Modane - Bardonecchia. This is the option you mentioned yourself. There is more frequent service on this route than on the second option I mentioned, for which reason it may be preferable. Then again, it probably takes more time to get to Grenoble than it does to Nice

If you have more time, you could consider travelling via Switzerland, but that's also a lot more costly. I'd either go for option 2 or 3 above.

[ Edit: Edited on 25-May-2009, at 04:44 by bentivogli ]

Thank you so much for the info. Very helpful.

Chambéry was another idea I had. What I would dearly love to do on our spare day, is to somehow make our way to Chamonix and take the cable car to the top of the Aiguille du Midi. Have you done this before? It seems as though it would be a little bit of messing around to actually make it to Chamonix for our two night stop over, however maybe we could get there on the day in between?

From Chambéry, you won't make it to Chamonix and back again on the same day. Check infolignes for more information.

Yeah. I've decided to forget about going to Chamonix as I've discovered that a major reason for going (the cable car) will not be operating when we're there anyway. So, Chambéry may be the way to go, or even Annecy which looks like pretty places to visit. Like the idea of somewhere a little different to the larger cities. Thanks again.