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Cinque Terra via hill towns or?

Staying in Siena for 4 days and will day trip to Florence, Chianti. We plan to travel to CT for a couple of days. We could train to Venice (never been) or car trip to hill towns San Gim, Volterra, Pisa, Lucca and drop car at La Spezia.

Thinking am I spending too much time in Siena, can I cut a day here travel to Venice and then train to CT and skip hill towns. We could always use a day from Siena to day trip to San Gim, Pisa. We have 2 days Rome (Wed, Th) then 4 Siena (Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon), then Tues to Sat before flying out of Rome Sunday. Hope you can help I am rather confused...
Thank you.

Posted by
16238 posts

That is a personal preference and only you can decide. If you decide to cut some of Siena to visit Venice, it would be difficult to also do the Cinque Terre. From Venice to the Cinque Terre it is a long train trip. You don't specify how many nights you have at your disposal. The ideal is always to spend at least two nights minimum at each hotel. When counting days, think of nights. Two nights at a location is one full day at that location. Travel days to transfer from one location to another are wasted days for the travel and the checking in and out process (including packing and unpacking).
Siena can be visited in a day, the hill towns another day, Florence needs at least two days, but just to get a taste of it, you can limit to a day. So in total you do need at a minimum 4 nights (3 full days) in Tuscany (Siena).
Venice alone needs a full day, so that would be two nights. Cinque Terre also needs a day from morning to evening, if you want to enjoy it and not just an in and out trip. Two nights would be good at the CT too.
If you have 8 nights available, you can do it all. If you only have seven, you can cut one night from Tuscany, but then you need to cut down either the hill towns or Florence.
Also for the locations you want to visit I don't see the need to rent a car, except for maybe a day to visit Volterra and San Gimignano or the Chianti.
All other locations you listed (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Pisa, Venice, Cinque Terre) don't need a car at all. You could base yourselves in Florence and do everything by public transport. Even San Gimignano.

Posted by
1816 posts

Personal taste for sure. For me, I'd much rather see the Tuscan hill towns and Venice that are so rich in history and art than the fishing villages of CT. Unless you're a serious hiker or paint mountainous seasides, there are other less crowded pleasures.

Posted by
32405 posts

neal,

If you'll be satisfied with just a quick look at the places you'll be visiting, it should be possible to fit in the hill towns, Cinque Terre and Venice. However, keep in mind that more of your very short time will be required for transportation time to the various places. I'd suggest skipping Pisa and use the time visiting some of the hill towns instead.

Perhaps something like this would work......

  • Wed. - Rome, touring
  • Thu. - Rome, touring
  • Fri. - Train or Bus to Siena, touring
  • Sat. - Siena and/or day trip to hill town
  • Sun. - Siena and/or day trip to hill town
  • Mon. - Train to Cinque Terre (which of the five towns are you planning to stay in - BE SURE to book hotels as soon as possible!)
  • Tue. - Cinque Terre
  • Wed. - Train to Lucca (about 2 hours, with one or two changes) - I don't normally like one night stops, but in this case it fits with the overall plan.
  • Thu. - Train to Venice (about 3H:50M, one change at Florence - note that your destination station is Venezia Santa Lucia).
  • Fri. - Venice, touring, Murano or Burano?
  • Sat. - Venice morning, train to Rome in afternoon (3H:45M).
  • Sun. - Flight home (if you use the Leonardo Express to the airport, DON'T forget to validate prior to boarding the train!)

There are many possibilities, and this is only one suggestion. DON'T forget to validate tickets when using Regionale trains, and be sure to check the train numbers before boarding trains which have compulsory reservations.

Happy travels!

Posted by
250 posts

Your going to get a lot of different opinions on this one. It comes down to what you like. It makes most sense to do all your hill towns from Siena. San Gim, Volterra .... I would not skip this. The hill towns are beautiful and Siena is wonderful to spend a day or 2 in, especially if you time it to when they have the market. We ended up spending an extra day in this area and cut a day from Venice... actually we even left early from Venice- but some people LOVE it. I think it just got old after a day- thats just me though. CT is great too- 2 days is enough I thought as well... You might get your fill of the big city with Rome, unless you love really busy populated places then you will enjoy Venice.