What would be the best way and most cost efficent way to visit both places with a weeks vacation time?
Fly into and out of Rome, taking the train to Florence spending a few days in Florence, traveling on to Cinque Terre spending a few days and then back tracking.
Unfortunately, there's no simple answer. Train time is short from Rome to Florence, a point in favor of the itinerary you propose. However, the train time to back-track from the CT to Rome, from the time you leave your CT hotel until the time you get to the Rome airport or a Rome hotel (for the last night) will take longer and consume most of the daylight hours of one day.Whether Rome - Florence - CT - Rome is the best alternative depends on a comparison of the cost, time, and convenience of the different alternatives, which depend on things you'll have to research, such as airfares into and out of Rome versus these 3 alternative airports: Florence, Pisa, and even Milan. If the roundtrip airfare into/out of Rome is low enough, that might drive your decision. To make the comparison of alternatives, you'll probably also want to consider the train fares and train times involved, especially from the CT back to Rome, which will take the better part of a day once all the steps are considered. So the other alternatives to investigate would include:into Milan - CT - Florence - Romeinto Florence - CT - Florenceand other combinations of the above
I know you can fly in to Florence, I just don't know the cost. If that was feasable, it would be perfect to spend some days there and take the train to CT for a few days and then back just to Florence. Train probably is about 3-3 1/2 hrs. That way, you could spend time in the 2 areas you mentioned solely.
However, if it's like the US, it may be pricier to fly into a city smaller than Rome.
Louise
I too assumed that it would be both cheaper and faster (non-stop) to fly from San Francisco to Rome than from SFO to Florence. Surprisingly, in all the time I've researched airfares I've never found that to be true!
I've found travel time is the same (one-stop;16 to 19+ hours. I will pay a bit more for the 16 hour itinerary) and the price is the same as well.
So, unless you're really getting a deal, fly in/out of Florence. The small airport is very nice, low- stress. You have to take a bus or cab to the train station.
Depending on which airline you like, prices to Milan are comparable to Florence, but that doesn't seem too important here, unless you want to fly open jaws. To that end, I've found United/Luftansa flights are competitively prices for open-jaw itineraries for Milan & Florence. Contintental has sales right now and has good prices to Milan--but not Florence so that won't work for you.
FWIW Delta flies from SFO to Pisa with one stop in the US--I believe that stop is either JFK or Newark. But, I'm getting far afield of your request.
The train time from Rome to Florence has actually gotten down to 1hr 40mins for many of the trains. That's station to station time, add for getting to the station, waiting for the train, etc.
Hence, 3 hours. lol
I've edited my response above to make more sense.
An important consideration that I did not articulate well, is how much of a time-saver it would be to get in/out of Florence (FLR) than it is to arrive/depart from FCO. See previous threads on the subject.
If you are locked into the Rome/Rome flights:
Take the express train to Florence ( under 3 hours )for 3 days-
4 hours by train over to the CT for 3 days-
Train back directly to Rome takes about 6 hours.
Alitalia recently had a special from Chicago to Pisa or Genoa roundtrip, which was nearly $200 cheaper than the fare into Rome. The difference in price was the main reason I thought to make a trip to CT this May instead of Rome.
Pisa & Genoa are both within an hour or so of CT.
