The Italian trains are reasonably efficient (but not perfect!), and most certainly well patronised! We're at present on our way from Venice to Florence, on a train that goes on to Rome. The Canadian a couple of rows away has finally quietened down, after providing a detailed description to some other North American travellers on his experiences in Rome, Sorrento and a number of other places. Why he imagines that he has to speak loudly enough to inform most of the carriage, I don't know. (PS – he later started up again!)
The train takes 2 hours 3 minutes to travel the distance to Florence, but its speed varies. Sometimes it travels at what is obviously a high speed (maybe 180 kmh?), but it slows in parts where the track presumably isn't rated for very high speed. Our internet bookings are accepted without question, there's a refreshment car further down the train (which we haven't bothered with), whereas on the Milan to Venice train, there was a trolley. The catches are that the Trenitalia seat allocation system doesn't work too well, and gives priority to getting you in a window seat rather than seating two people are travelling together next to each other! Hence, there's a lot a seat-swapping, and a certain amount of confusion at times. Also, there's baggage piled everywhere as the racks at the end of the carriage are insufficient. So far I've only seen one freight train, and the wagons weren't even bogies. Like the Milan to Venice trip, the geography so far as Bologna has been flat and looks pretty fertile (corn ands other crops, as well as some grapevines). But after Bolgna, the landscape was hilly and the line was in a series of tunnels for almost the entire way.
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