Drive from Cinque Terre to Venice or train?

Beware of driving in those towns! Others will warn you of ZLT tickets...

We drove from CT to Venice - but did it directly along a more northern route. It took all day - a very long day (which we knew it would be). It was a Sunday and everyone was going someplace. The toll booth coming off the autostrada near Marco Polo was backed up for miles. It took almost 2 hours to crawl through there!!!

Yes Verona is cool. I advise driving. Just have your visa card ready for Autostrade tolls much faster than digging for euros.

Did the drive from CT to Cesena, in bad weather, in 3 hours. Stay on the autostrada, bring a GPS (or rent a car with one) in case of a back up on the Strada and you'll be fine.

Ron

I'm with Steve, Verona is wonderful. I loved Ravenna, but it is somewhat out of the way, though maybe easier by car than by train.

Pisa is worth 1/2 day. If you take the train, stop en route to Florence (or Lucca?). You can check your bags at the train station.

Thanks for all the messages - appreciate the help. We are going to stay in Cinque Terre for 3 nights - besides walking the trails and seeing the 5 towns, are there any day trips we would want to do from Riomaggore?

We enjoyed the ferry boat between the towns. We had 3 nights and 2 days in 5Terra. My husband walked half the trail on one day. The 2nd day we took the ferry boat ride and then got off at the town he stopped at the day before. We had lunch together. I explored the town. He continued his hike and took the train back. I took the ferry back. I guess it depends on if you want to try to hike the whole trail in one day or divide it up the way he did. We took the trains from 5 Terra to Venice early our last morning. People on this site gave us good advice as to the best way to do it by train.

Our trip seems to be paralleling yours! How was the train trip from CT to Venice? It looks like it is 5 hours on the train with 2 stops which is why we were thinking about driving. The train arrives in Venice near where the cruise ship dock is so I think we will go with the train.
Any other advise is appreciated.

I don't every recommend that people drive to Venice. You will be paying to park that useless rental car. Driving to Venice on the Autobahn was exhausting the 2 times that we did it because the road was jam packed and just crawling along. There's one small exit for Venice Island which is clearly marked on but we missed it both times because we dared to merge into the faster middle and left lanes which meant all of those super slow tractor trailers were in the right hand lane and their trucks prevented us from seeing the exit sign. By the time we saw it we were unable to merge because of all those stupid trucks. I can't believe it happened on BOTH of our driving trips to Venice. From then on it was the train!