Florence to Cinque Terre Viator?

Kitty, why not do it yourself. Here's my intinerary for a self-guided one-day trip to the CT from Florence. It's a long day but you can hike two of the four trails between the towns and visit four of the five towns. Just don't try to squeeze in Pisa and/or Lucca along with the CT. Here's a suggested routing. Take the train from Florence to Riomaggiore. I suggest the 7:00am train that gets you to Riomaggiore at 10:08 with train changes in Pisa and La Spezia Centrale (9.60Euro). There are other runs during the morning. Leisurely stroll down the main street to the water. It's only about 500 feet or so. Try to find a TI to purchase a 1-day Cinque Terre Treno pass. This provides unlimited train and trail travel in the CT.
Walk the famous first trail from Riomaggiore to Manarola (30 minutes). It's beautiful). Note that there are ticket booths on the trail. Your CT Treno card will cover the fare. Tour Manarola (30 min). Pick up the 2nd trail in Manarola and hike to the Cornigla train station (45 min). Skip Corniglia which is high up on the bluff. Instead take the train to Monterosso. It's about 1:00pm now. Tour Monterosso (about 1hr.). Have lunch there or take the train to Vernazza and have lunch there. Doesn't matter. Both great. Tour Vernazza. It's about 3:00pm-4:00pm now. You can extend your town visits and stay later. Finally, take the train from Vernazza to Florence (about 3.0hrs). Or, if you are really adventureous, take the ferry from Vernazza to Portovenere and then take the short bus ride to La Spezia Centrale and pick up the train from there. There's your long day.

Victor is a tour consolidator and work with many different companies. Unless you know which company you'll get it's hard to say if it'll be a good tour or not. You can easily visit the cinque Terre on your own and see what you want, when you want and save some money while doing it. Donna

THANK YOU so very much!! We are a family of 5, our three "children" are 20 to 24 years :-) We are all for adventure. This is our first European trip and we have all of our major airline and train reservations. I had wanted to stay in CT, but decided to stay in Florence for three nights instead and branch out on day trips. In an attempt not to overload us too much, I thought that we could plan the details of our trip once we are there; however, not being familar with the area, I was unsure if maybe we should be making reservations for tours. Your CT recommendations for the day sound perfect. We leave next weekend and even though I want to attempt to simplify, I do not know when we will be back and want to make the most of our time there..duhhh!!! We will be spending two nights in Rome before taking the train to Florence. We have reservations to see the Vatican at night and otherwise plan to go with the flow. Thank you!

Kitty: I just got back from Nice yesterday. I was in CT a week ago. I run into the RS small village tour while I was in CT, the day Italy National Train were on strike for four hours. I alert them that was a pre- strike in the afternoon. The real strike will be on some time around May 18?. Check it out I am not sure the days. Also, the train was on strike in France on May 10. Just want you to aware on this. It can mass up you schedule. Have a good trip.
Rick

Kitty, there is a TI in the La Spezia Centrale train station. If you have time before your train to Riomaggiore, jump in and get your 1-day Cinque Terre Treno card. You get unlimited train travel from La Spezia to Levento in the north all day long. It also covers you at the fare booths on the trails (yes there are trolls on the trails that want your Euros).

what is a TI that everyone keeps reffering to

Deb, TI stands for Tourist Information office. They are called by that name in Europe. Map locations of many TI offices are in all of the Rick Steves travel books.

Often the directional sign to the TI is a large script lower case 'i'. The kicker is that sometimes when you follow the signs, especially in the smaller towns, is all that you find is a glass-covred bulletin board type deal.