Cinque Terre stop between Rome and Venice

Shirley, please look at a good map in some greater detail. You would be going a very long way for a 2 hour visit. 8 hours of travel at a minimum.

Look at a map and also the train schedules. From Rome to Vernazza in Cinque Terre takes a minimum of 4 hours 10 minutes. From there to Venice, the shortest journey is 5 hours 18 minutes, but that one leaves at 2:15 pm; you'd have to get to Vernazza by noon to have your 2 hours in CT. Anything after that takes 6 hours or more. Going via Genoa takes even longer.

So you are looking at 10 hours of train time to get 2 hours in Cinque Terre.

Bob is being kind....

While it doesn't look like much extra , here is the reality of this detour.

Rome to Venice is on a fast Eurostar train takes a bit less than four hours. You can have breakfast at your hotel and be in Venice having lunch without much hassle. You'll be traveling for 3 hours 48 minutes.

Assuming you make this detour ( and you won't go all the way to Genova, that's longer) you'll add an additional 6 hours of travel time to your day.

You'll get about 4 hours or so in the CT, unless you want to arrive in Venice after midnight. Then you could stretch it to maybe 5 or 6 hours in the villages.

All that train travel would not let you have a nice dinner. You would be eating something on the train.

Don't do it Shirley! That is way too much of a "detour".

Just to to Venice directly!!!

hmm. unless i did the train schedule wrong, it seemed that i could take the 9:45am train to La Spezia and arrive by 2pm and then take the 6:19pm train out of Genoa (switching trains in Milan) and arrive in Venice by midnight. in which case 4 hours would be enough to have a meal and see two of the cities? there's still the matter of what to do with my bag...

What schedule are you using? From what I see, the only train that would get you to La Spezia by noon would be an 8:07 from Roma Termini. At La Spezia, you still have to wait for another train to the CT; it's another 20-25 minutes to Vernazza, and you arrive at 12:19.

For the onward journey, you can do as you said--you board a train at Vernazza at 4:55 pm, change at Monterosso, and that train passes thru Genoa at 6:19 pm on the way to Milan. Change there for a train to Venice and you get there just before midnight.

But---if you leave your luggage at La Spezia, you'd have to return there to get it before heading to Venice.

I'm getting the impression that you are not going swayed and frankly it's your trip.

So let me make another suggestion.

Venice is one of the more expensive places in Italy for both food and lodging. So why not do this:

There is an 8:07 out of Roma Termini that gets you to Monterosso al Mare around 12:30. Have lunch, check into a hotel, grab that local train and visit all the villages, have dinner in Vernazza or somewhere. Come back, get rested, then leave Monterosso at 07:30 to arrive in Venice around 12:30 and have lunch.

My guess is that almost anywhere you stay in the CT will be cheaper than Venice and you will have the opportunity to have lunch, dinner and breakfast in Liguria, which has some of the most wonderful seafood dishes on the planet.

If you try to skip the overnight in the CT, you will not have a lot of time, you will have to hassle with luggage and you won't get the opportunity for a real dinner meal.

At this point it is too late to spend the night in Cinque Terre because some friends have already paid for a hotel in Venice. My hopes of going to Cinque Terre was to enjoy the beauty and it didn't seem too expensive train wise to make the stop and I figured I could spend the whole rest of my trip (Venice, Florence, Rome) enjoying the food. If I can't seem to figure out the situation of storing my bag, I guess I won't go, but the following seems to be my best bet if I do?

So Roma Termini 9:46AM (my flight to Rome gets in at 8:30AM) to Spezia C.le at 13:51.

Spezia C.le 14:06 to Vernazza 14:28. Have lunch and explore.

15:28 train from Vernazza to Manarola 15:36. Get some gelato.

Walk the Via dell'Amore to Riomaggiore. 16:15

16:52 train from Riomaggiore to La Spezia 16:59.

17:41 train from La Spezia C. le. to Venezia St. Lucia (is that correct train to get to Venice?).

I guess before I was hoping to leave from Genoa because there's a train that leaves at 6:45PM, but I didn't realize how far away it was so La Spezia it is! Any thoughts on the bag situation? I appreciate everyone's help!

Sounds like you have a good idea on how out of the way CT is so as long as you are ready for that I say go for it. I don't think any of the train stations in CT have a place for you to check your baggage, of course I wasn't looking for a baggage check so I could be wrong. If La Spezia has a baggage check I would leave your bags there.

AAAACKKKK!!!!!!!!

We thought you were already in Rome!!!!!!

Let me once again try to suggest that there are wonderfully lovely places that are actually on the way to Venice from Rome, that are interesting and have great food. Rick even likes them.

Bologna would come to mind.

It's your trip. but just to make sure you fully grasp the situation, you will be getting off a trans Atlantic flight of at least eight hours more if travel from the west coast that day. If you miss the 9:06 Leonardo Express to Termini, you would not arrive in Vernazza until 16:21.

Even if everything goes perfectly, you will have exactly 3 hours and 24 minutes in the CT.

My thoughts exactly. I fear you (Shirley) are placing more faith in the on-time records of the air carrier and the Italian train system than they deserve. There is no way I would consider this on the day of arrival from a flight from the west coast of the US.

I'm sure you have read wonderful things about the Cinque Terre... But to be frank, everyone I know who has visited on a short daytrip has found it too crowded and missing in the ambiance they came to find. The people who really love the place spend at night or two at the least. I don't think you can do it justice in 2-3 hours.

We spent 4 days in the Cinque Terre and while lovely I would not say it is worth the travel time, especially on your day of arrival.

We also found the regional Italian trains to be slightly unreliable, about 25% of our trains seemed to be late, one was 4 hours late, another 1 hour! You also can't rely on making that train to La Spezia, your flight could be late or you could get caught up in the airport. Never flown into Rome but it took us about 90 minutes in Frankfurt to get out of the airport after our flight landed and it wasn't really that busy.

I think Lindy hit it right.Trains in the CT are not reliable.The Ct is best at night.During the day it is packed with daytrippers and when they leave it is much nicer.I wouldnt go there unless I could stay a night at least.

Wake up and smell the coffee, Shirley!

Problem #1:

" So Roma Termini 9:46AM (my flight to Rome gets in at 8:30AM) to Spezia C.le at 13:51. "

You may very well still by inside the AIRPORT awaiting customs when the TRAIN pulls out of Termini @ 9:46. Flights do not always arrive on time. The customs lines can be delayed. This is all part of the Italian adventure.

You asked for advice, but it appears that you have made up your mind. Good luck.

Shirley, for that amount of travel, I would consider leaving Cinque Terre off unless you plan to spend some more time there. You should not torture yourself by going to Cinque Terre and only spending a few hours; you will regret it if you did that. I think you should spend at least two days there. Consider going to some other city that would be on the way to Rome possibly Verona, Bologna or Siena. These towns are smaller and you can probably see most of the big sights in less than one day.