We will be in Florence and hope to do a day trip to Cinque Terre and just see 3 of the villages. All five would be too speedy to enjoy.
The plan is to take the trains and do no hiking. Everything I see states hiking. My thought was the train from Florence to La Spezia, once there, switch to the 5 Terre Express train, a fast-regional train that runs every 15 minutes and connects all five villages. Visit Riomaggiore, Manarola and Corniglia.
Is this possible? Any help appreciated.
Be aware that the climb from the train up to Corniglia involves an exceedingly large number of stairs. However, there is a nice little church in the town, and good gelato. The stroll from train to town is shorter in Vernazza, and there is a nice winery tasting room right in town (at least there was in 2018.)
My suggestion is to take the ferry boat. Much better view of the towns and coastline than on the train.
The ferry can reach 4 of the 5 towns. Get a day pass and hop on- hop off where you want.
I forgot to mention it is on a March 23rd do the ferry boats run at that time?
I forgot to b mention we are doing this March 24rd will the ferry be running?
Kathy, I love the Cinque Terre. But, visiting the area without hiking would, to me, be like visiting Florence and not visiting any of the museums. It's still a lovely town, but you're probably visiting the Florence just to walk around the town.
I'm guessing there won't be as many tourists in March in any of the CT towns. I've never been there at that time of the year - not sure how much of the towns will be "open" for tourists. In season, the towns are pretty obnoxiously overcrowded with tour groups in the daytime. Maybe they won't be so bad in March. I enjoy them much more in the evenings when it's less crowded, but obviously that's hard to do when you are day tripping. I would encourage you to stick around to watch the sunset into the ocean if you can, if the weather is nice (sunset should not be too late in March, and you ought to be able to get back to Florence by a decent hour.).
The train is very easy to use to visit any/all of the five towns. Corniglia the town is a steep climb from the train station as noted above, but there is a shuttle bus that will take you up and down. The ferry boat does offer amazing scenic views on the towns, but it sounds like it doesn't start running until the end of March. Not sure what "end of March" means - check closer to your arrival to see if the ferry is an option. You don't have to reserve any of the trains (you can't and the price of the local trains in the Cinque Terre is the same no matter when you book them). You'll need to get up to one of the villages by train anyway to get on the ferry at all.
