Cinque Terre tour operator suggestions ?

The CT is quite some distance from Florence, although people seem to do it often enough as a day trip. Thing is, you really don't need a tour and, personally, I think it would be much more enjoyable without one. Escorted coach tours tend to involve really large groups, and those can be unwieldy in places as small as the CT villages. Doing it on your own also allows you flexibility to work around weather: you can choose your day. I"ll mention that as a friend who chose a tour for her day trip ended up seeing it in heavy fog and rain: not what she'd hoped for!

You can also choose how much or how little you want to spend in each village, and what you want to do in them. For instance, are your teenagers thinking that swimming is high on the list and what they envision doing for a big chunk of the day?

The tradeoff, of course, is being willing to handle your own arrangements but it's not difficult. There is a 7:38 train from Firenze Campo di Marte station that will land you into La Spezia Centrale in about 90 minutes. Going back, a train leaves La Spezia at 20:03 and returns you to Campo di Marte in the same amount of time. From La Spezia, you hop trains or ferries to get around the CT: am happy to cover those details if you're interested?

Side note: in a previous thread, there was concern for the very little time you'd allowed for Florence itself. Have you adjusted that itinerary at all?

Hi DT: got your message (thank you!) and I'm going to suggest starting a NEW thread for doing the CT independently, OK? People often browse the forums for info they can use for their own trips so in case some of it is useful to them, it would be great to share the knowledge. It'll also give the RS resident CT experts the opportunity to chime in: a variety of responses is always helpful!

Include what it it is you'd like to accomplish on your day trip, and number/ages of your family. You up for that? :O)

Absolutely !!! Thanks Kathy.

We are family of 4, 2 adults and 16 & 13 year old teenagers with us. Some hiking is fine with us but not all the villages considering the heat . We will be in CT on July 29th. Looking to do a day trip either via tour or on our own if we have full details on how to go around.
Things we would like to do :
- Preferably all 5 villages
- Definitely some time for swimming (maybe 2 hours )
- would love to do a boat ride
- Doing the iconic photos which we see on all the websites :)
- Spend about 45 mins in each village just walking around ?

Great info DT but can you copy paste that into a NEW thread with a different heading? I'm afraid people who can help with an independent trip will skip over a thread about tour operators.

Editing to add: you just reposted. Thank you!