Coastal town in Tuscany comparable to Cassis, France?

Tuscan coast or Cinque Terre?
The Cinque Terre are not in Tuscany.
And will you have a car?

Good correction - I misread the map. We'll visit the CT, for sure, but trying to determine what else we'd like to do that's a little less traveled, and happy to get a car to explore in Tuscany.

Hi Jules, Im replying again because you travel like we do. From your other post, I think it would be a challenge to go somewhere along the coast in addition to the CT and everything else you have planned. One thing we did in the CT is, in Manarola, there is a big rock in the harbor area that people jump off of (cliff jumping). We hiked there and cliff jumped for an hour or so (we divided the hiking into chunks over our 3 day stay, so that each day we hiked a section of the trail between Monterosso and Riomaggiore and then did a water activity. That day, we took the train to Riomaggiore, and hiked to Manarola, and swam, and then trained back to Monterosso).
You can also rent little boats in Monterosso (iirc we rented a paddle boat that had a slide attached. But our kids were young. Maybe there are other boat rental options for bigger kids ;)
(We also rented an outboard motor boat in Cassis and went to the Calanques on a different Europe trip, so Im trying to think of similar for your itinerary). Imo, you will be too far from the coast once you are on your Tuscany leg for a beach visit to make sense.

Those are great tips, Jessica! Thank you.

Any other CT activities for active explorers welcome. (For Venice or Rome, too.)

The geography of coastal Tuscany is unlike the landscape of Cassis...you do not have cliffs rising from the sea in Tuscany, at least the parts I know of....

Take a look at Liguria, renting a boat from Camogli.....to San Fruttuoso....

And also take a look at other guides in addition to RS..he tends to cover only the most famous and most touristed spots..

I agree that Liguria is more like Cassis, but that's not on your route this time. Or islands like Ischia or Elba. So you'll have to come back ;) As for Venice and Rome, you have so little time there and so much to see. You will be walking from sun up to midnight. As you like to just 'be' in a place (same), you will enjoy picking an area of each city to cover per day, and figuring out what things you want to see in that area, and just walking. In Venice I have never ended up taking the Vaporato to get around the city as I just walk. This way, I get to experience little pockets of town that are less touristy. That's the adventure there. Same with Rome. In Rome we stayed in the Trastevere neighborhood and loved the village-inside-a-city feel, and it was easy to walk from there to everywhere within 30 minutes (which sounds long, but the entire walk was through neighborhoods and past sites that we also wanted to see. We walked from Trastevere to the Vatican, to the Colosseum, the Spanish steps, etc etc., and of course as you walk to the Colosseum you pass the Jewish ghetto, and wander there too). We did have back-pocket ideas of riding bikes along the Appian way or going to Ostia Antica, but didnt end up doing either because our days were so full. We did spend one day in Borghese park after seeing the Borghese museum and rented Segways for an hour. This is when the kids were younger though (9-14) so it was to give them a thrill after the museum ;)

Excellent, Jessica!! My style of travel, too.

This is how I like to travel and I so appreciate your responses. My request here wasn't as much about wanting to replicate Cassis, but wanting to replicate the experience of being in a place that the locals go doing something unique, other than just signing up for a tour.

Jessica, I'm looking at AirBNBs in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome. In the CT, did you stay in Monterosso? And do you have a suggestion for where to stay in Venice? I've been advised to stay "across the way" and "out of the fray" but I'm trying to figure out where that is:).

Thank you for your help!

And do you have a suggestion for where to stay in Venice? I've been advised to stay "across the way" and "out of the fray" but I'm trying to figure out where that is:).

Staying out of the fray means avoiding the San Marco neighborhood for your accommodations. Very crowded and touristy, although some enjoy staying there. Good descriptions of different Venice neighborhoods in the RS Guidebook. We stayed in an apartment in the Dorsoduro neighborhood, which we loved. Walking distance to many sights, but enough distance from Piazza S. Marco to escape large crowds. Many enjoy the Cannaregio area, near train station.

"Jessica, I'm looking at AirBNBs in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome. In the CT, did you stay in Monterosso? And do you have a suggestion for where to stay in Venice? I've been advised to stay "across the way" and "out of the fray" but I'm trying to figure out where that is:)."

We did stay in Monterosso. We rented an Airbnb there too. In Venice I have stayed in 3 places and my favorite was last year. The back story is that several of us like to lift weights, so I scope out gyms in the places we travel before I book, and then get places near-ish to the gym I like so I can go there in the morning. Lat summer is the first time I really did this and it turned out to make our trip so much fun. Speaking of going to places to just 'be'. We go to live there... and also see a lot of amazing things. So, the location we stayed in Venice last year was just south of the Chiesa di Santa dei Derelitti. The street was Barbaria de le Tole. What I liked so much was that we could walk everywhere within 20-30 minutes (from the Jewish ghetto all the way to the Basilica Santa Maria della Salute - which you must walk to, to see the view from the point of land it is on!) but the area itself was not swarming with tourists. It was near the gym, but also near a grocery store (the co-op) where we bought groceries for our breakfasts. In short, it felt like more of a hybrid between tourist area and resident's area. Also, it was close to the ferries, so if you take a boat from the airport to Venice, you will get off right near that area. We took a ferry to Murano one day and it was another easily accessible thing.

Consider Camogli too.