Cinque Terre to Venice

Hello m31capital, and welcome to the forum,

The closest city to CT is La Spezia so if you could arrange to rent a car in La Spezia and drop it in Venice you could drive this in probably about 4 hours if everything goes well. The route could easily be all major roads so ZTLs wouldn't be a problem unless you get off in a small city for lunch or sight seeing. Depending on your route your biggest surprise might be toll roads but if you plan your route these tolls areas are well known.

This is the rare case in which driving could be faster than the train because you're crossing Italy at nearly it's widest point. The train is the other option and if you choose your trains carefully the same route would take anyway from 4:20 to 6:30 with two changes. The last big chunk being the fast train from Florence to Venice for 2:14 minutes arriving at Venice Santa Lucia.

Unless you're planning on doing something you can only do with a car - such as visit a town that you can't get to by train - I would opt for the train as easier and more relaxing. I don't know what the cost of renting a car for the day, with a drop off fee in Venice, but cheap tickets would run you about 30-45e booked ahead of time.

Hope that helps,
=Tod

DMZ? If you plan to drive to Korea there are a lot of issues. If you just want to get from A to B, the train sounds like the easiest option.

Between picking up your car in La Spezia and dropping it of in Venice you will not save any time versus just taking the train from whichever CT town you find yourself in to Venice. Renting a car just to get from one place to another hardly ever makes sense, especially if you have no other use for the car at your destination.

So just take the train. See www.trenitalia.com for times and prices. And yes, just enter the name of the CT town you are staying in as origin, and do not make any assumptions about what the best route is.

we did this 2 years ago from Vernazza to Venice.

One change in Milan.

It's an all-day affair no matter how you slice it, but I would certainly recommend the train vs car

We actually returned our rental car in La Spezia after touring Tuscany. As an American speaking very little Italian, I wouldn't recommend it. the offices are in the city center surrounded by ZTLs. There was no "rental car return area" we are accustomed to in the States...had to find parking and the whole situation was stressful.