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Which airport would you choose?

Pati

10+ Posts
Because we have a home near Chicago and one in Fort Lauderdale, I think flying out of New York or Chicago would be easiest when looking for flights to Florence. I’ve flown from Chicago to Paris and transferred from there to Florence, but the airport was huge and very confusing. Has anyone had an easier experience from any other city in Europe to Florence? Or because of the availability of flights, should I just think about Rome and a train from there? I know I’m thinking about this early, but I’m a planner when it comes to getting there.
 
The only problem with training from Rome to Florence is the potential of rail strikes. Which happened to us and we had to rent a car one way.
 
It's exceedingly rare that the fast Freccia trains between Rome and Florence are cancelled by strikes. Generally speaking, I would go for a non-stop flight to Rome, best if it's early enough to connect to the direct train from the airport to Florence leaving at 11.08 a.m. on the current schedule.
 
Because we have a home near Chicago and one in Fort Lauderdale.....

We have friends in Florida who fly from Orlando to Frankfurt and then transfer to a flight to Florence. Your Fort Lauderdale home might not be too far away from Orlando to make that a choice, but would take a look at flights from your other options that connect through either Frankfurt or Munich. Frankfurt is a large airport, but is well marked and efficient. Munich is not bad at all.

One of our nieces flew into Rome in June and took the train to Lucca (via Florence) to meet us and was very happy with the service and comfort of the train -- gave her a chance to get some sleep after the flight.
 
Amsterdam and Zurich are both connecting airports that IMO are much easier to navigate than Paris CDG. I'll often fly Delta/AirFrance/KLM (from Boston) and prefer Amsterdam's Schiphol to Paris CDG if all other factors are equal.
 
I flew Austrian Air from Dulles through Zurich to Florence and returned from Florence through Munich to Dulles last year. Great flights...Zurich and Munich were very easy airports to navigate. You can fly Chicago through Zurich, Munich and Frankfort to Florence....not sure about Frankfort, but Munich and Zurich were great airports.
 
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Certainly worth having Pisa as an option - it's an airport with quite a few flight connections and a train station which makes it easier with luggage to connect to Florence.
 
Florence is a tiny airport with a short runway and susceptible to strong winds closing it down. Pisa is a better option.
 
Thank you all. I’ve been checking prices and it seems Swiss Air has the best prices from Chicago through Zurich to Florence. But now I’m going to check Chicago to Rome, and train to Florence, as my son and girlfriend got great prices around the same time. Is there a discussion somewhere on this site explaining how to find the train in the Rome airport?
 
There's signage to the airport train station. From Terminal 3, where flights from overseas come out of baggage claim (if you connect in Europe, check to see if that airline comes out in T1), there are both an underpass and overpass to cross the roadway, but maybe the underpass is better located. You can see a map with the layout at http://www.adr.it/documents/10157/1...0627.pdf/7b273818-b303-40db-8f8c-c6cf0f34229e , and the yellow train logo for the station.
 
We have also had good experiences with Zurich in the past and more recently with Amsterdam. Paris CDG was very difficult the two times we flew to, or through, that airport. Even though we had quite a bit of time for our connecting flight, the shuttles from one terminal to another were few and far between and made the transfer more stressful than it should have been.
 

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