Best towns to Vist in Cinque Terre and easiest to get to via Rail

Hi Virginia -
The unfortunate news is that the CT - pretty much ALL of it - will be busy during the daytime in June. Corniglia is the less visited as you must take a little bus, climb a steep road or a loooooong flight of steps from its train station up to the village - obviously options # 2 and #3 are not possible in your case - but because it's so tiny it also doesn't take many bodies to overwhelm it. We were there early in the morning before it got busy but people I know who've who visited middle of the day/early afternoon said they found it uncomfortably crowded. But maybe others have had different experiences?

And just as unfortunately, the Via dell' Amore path between Manarola and Riomaggiore has been closed for some time and will remain so throughout this season.

Is this a day trip from Lucca or are you planning on staying overnight? If planning on staying, I'd recommend Monterosso as it has the largest area of relatively flat ground and is the largest of the 5 villages so is better able to disperse the daytime crowds. Corniglia would also be OK - quiet in the mornings and evenings - but I'd be very careful of booking something easy to get to from the little bus stop; a lot of accommodations there (in all five villages, in fact) can involve a lot of steps to get to. Having to navigate fairly steep inclines is also common to parts of almost all of them.

There are many trains which will take you to the CT so it's best of explore them on the Trenitalia website:

http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en

Just choosing Lucca as a departure station and Corniglia for arrival, it looks to take anywhere from 2-3 hours one-way from Lucca, with train changes in at least 2 different places depending on the train you want to take. If deciding to start in a different village, just use that one for your arrival station. If going back to Lucca that same night, just change the names of your arrival/departure stations. You do not have to purchase tickets in advance; buy them in Lucca on the day of your journey, and validate any which are on regionale trains (no seat assignments) before boarding. You'll need to validate train tickets for any trains you take between villages in the CT as well.

Although I haven't done it, you can (weather permitting) take a boat along the Cinque Terre coast, also hitting Portovenere and occasionally La Spezia. There is no stop in Corniglia. That seems like a good way to get a view of all the towns without going up and down a lot of hills. The webpage hasn't been updated with the 2017 schedule yet, but the 2016 schedule is online.

A very good idea from acraven! You could board the boat in Riomaggiore and ride it all the way to Monterosso (or the other way) if you wish. They're not hop-on/hop off boats, though, so if you get off, say, to explore Vernazza and then want to take another boat to another village, you have to purchase another ticket.

Editing to add: the incline from the dock in Riomaggiore up through the town may be more than you'll want to take on. It would be easier to get ON a boat (meaning you'd be headed downhill to the docks) than off here.

I was in the CT in Sept. We bought a ticket that allowed us to hop on and off at the villages. It worked out well for us, but as another poster mentioned, thre are steps to climb from the boat in some of the villages.

Thanks for the correction, Diane! I knew they'd done away with a HOHO option some years back but hadn't heard it had been reinstated.

I stayed in Riomaggiore and it was a really steep climb from the train station up to my hotel. As I was leaving I found out that there's a minibus that does the trip - I have no idea what hours, what frequency, what cost.

The ferry along the coast gives wonderful views of the towns, best in the afternoon with the sun in the west.