Swiss Half Fare Card Florence to Lauterbrunnen

Hi everyone,

My friends and I are traveling to Italy and Switzerland from May 24-June 10. We bought the swiss half-fare card after using the example rail calculation sheet on this site. We are trying to purchase tickets on SBB from Florence to Lauterbrunnen and are not sure if it would be okay to select the half-fare travelcard option even though we have the swiss half-fare card, which is almost the same but for tourists. Has anyone bought tickets on SBB after purchasing the swiss half-fare card? If so, did you just select the half-fare travelcard option?

Lastly, I am only able to make the purchase for the florence to lauterbrunnen trip if I go from the timetable instead of ticketshop and individual tickets. This may be a dumb question but will these tickets be accepted in the Italian rail stations?

Thank you,

Anmol

Hi Anmol, welcome to MySwissAlps!

The Swiss Half Fare Card for tourists is indeed nearly the same thing as the listed Half-fare travelcard for Swiss citizens. I think you can select that one for trips to/from Italy, but I've never done so myself and I'm not 100% sure. For Germany and Austria for example, there are actual differences and it can't be done like that. You have two alternatives that work for sure:

1. Buy a Florence to Domodossola ticket from any of the sites listed here. I don't know what you mean with your last question, but these sites sell Trenitalia tickets and you won't have a problem with these. Additionally, you can buy a 50% discounted ticket from the SBB site for Domodossola to Lauterbrunnen.
2. Like option 1, but buy Florence to Brig. In Brig you can buy a discounted ticket to Lauterbrunnen. These don't sell out so you don't have to buy it in advance. If you get off in Brig anyway you can consider the scenic route by taking the local train via Goppenstein to Spiez and change there.

Enjoy the trip!

Hi Arno!

Thank you for your help! My last question on the previous post was just asking if I could buy tickets for Italy to Switzerland from sbb by selecting the half-fare travelcard and if those tickets would be accepted at the Italian trainstations. We tried buying the tickets on ACP rail, however we got an error saying that the website was temporarily out of service. We are trying again this morning; however, I have a few more questions if you don't mind answering.

1. Is there a reason you suggest Domodossola or Brig instead of Milan to Spiez? This route has less transfers and comes up when I put in Florence to Lauterbrunnen in SBB.

2. We had problems with our CapitalOne credit cards online on SBB; will we be able to use them at the train stations? They are visas but don't have pins since American credit cards work a little bit differently.

Thanks again!

Anmol

Hi Anmol,

You're very welcome!

1. I was only explaining about the tickets. That is not related to the route, or where to change trains. We are both talking about the same route. All that matters is that you have tickets that cover your entire route. You don't need to get off the train in Domodossola, for example, just because you have tickets to/from that town. Just stay seated.

2. To be honest, it's the first time I heard about that credit card. But in general I would not count on credit cards without a PIN to work in ticketing machines. They probably do work at staffed desks. Many credit cards with PIN will work fine, as well as Maestro debit cards which I use myself most of the time. Having some cash at hand just in case is recommended.

We have some technical issues right now so you may not be able to reply to my post immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience, we're working on it!