Italy lakes and Cinque Terre

Rent a car at the airport and head to Lake Maggiore, and/or Lake Como. Pick your town and stay a day or two and take the ferry around the lakes. If you look at a map you can plot your small town adventure along the way.

Drive down to La Spezia (probably do it in a day) dump the car there and jump the train to 5 Terre for as long as you like, then train to Milano from there.

You can easily take the train from Milano Centrale to Varenna. Find lodging there, then you can take the mid-lake ferry and hop off and on at various villages around the lake. There have been a lot of suggestions here on where to stay in Lake Como (everyone has their favorites).

lc,

With only a very short 12 days, you won't be able to see much of the "lakes region" so will have to prioritize. A few questions.....

• Does that time frame include your two travel days?
• What prompted your desire to see the lakes? Is there a particular lake you're interested in?
• Where are you flying out of?
• Have you got any hotels booked?
• Which of the five Cinque Terre towns are you planning to stay in?
• Have you travelled in Italy (or Europe before)?

If no hotels are booked, you could have trouble finding vacancies given that you're travelling at the end of the month. That's especially true in the Cinque Terre.

It would help if you could provide more detailed information on your trip.

It would help if you could provide more detailed information on your
trip.

Right. It would help a lot if you could provide more information. In addition to Ken's questions:

• What country are you flying from/to?

• What airport in Milan are you flying in and out of, Malpensa or Linate? Do be aware that Malpensa is quite some distance from the city of Milan so you'd want to stay closer versus further away the night before departure.

• Who is "we"? A couple? A family? Approx. ages? Any mobility issues?

• Interests: how do you want to spend your time?

Most towns around Lake Como/Lugano/Maggiore and all in the Cinque Terre are small so I don't know as you need to add others between the CT and the Lakes Region. Honestly, and I mean this very kindly, but you've left it very late to plan a trip you're leaving for in just 3 weeks. As Ken has already mentioned, this is particularly true of the Cinque Terre as accommodations start filling months in advance of high season. Have you made any sort of pre-arrangements for anywhere on your list at all?

Thanks to all for your help. We are 2 mobile senior couples who have been to Europe 3 times, Italy once. Our time frames are flexible; we fly standby. We most likely will fly into Malpensa from Boston. We have +/- 12 days depending on what we decide to do. We like to travel by train but are not afraid of renting a car for part of the trip. We like to explore off the beaten path! We are intrigued by Lake Maggiore and do not have any particular Cinque Terra town that we want to stay in; we'd love to see them all. Are La Spezia or Lovanto close enough to take public transportation?

lc,

Thanks for the additional information. There are lots of possibilities, but perhaps something like this would work.....

• Arrive MXP, travel immediately to Stresa on Lago Maggiore. Stresa would be a good location to recover from jet lag.
• Tour Stresa and area (4 nights?) You could explore some of the nearby lake towns, take a day trip to Locarno (CH) one day on the scenic Cento Valli Railway, returning in the evening by Ferry. You'll also need a day to tour the Borromeo Islands (if you're interested) and Mt. Mottarone.
• Train to Cinque Terre (4 nights?). As you'll be travelling at the end of the month, you'll probably have trouble finding a hotel room in the five towns. Monterosso is the largest of the five, so you could start looking there. Levanto is only about four minutes by train from Monterosso, and La Spezia is only about eight minutes by train from Riomaggiore, so that's also an option (but staying in one of the five towns is preferred). While there you could tour nearby towns like Porto Venere, Portofino or others.
• For the third locaton, you could pick another lake, such as Lago di Como, or split the time with another destination such as Florence. There are lots of different possibilities.

Your trips can easily all be done by train, so I wouldn't recommend renting a car. As you may have noticed from other posts on the forum, using rental cars in Italy comes with some potentially expensive "caveats". To begin with, each driver listed on the rental form will require the compulsory International Driver's Permit, which is used in conjunction with your home D.L. You'll also have to be extremely vigilant to avoid the ZTL (limited traffic) areas, speed cameras, etc. Here's one recent example - https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/speeding-ticket-italy

Thanks so much for your help, Ken. We are all set for Lake Maggiore and Levanto. We have a few extra days and can fly out of Venice, Milan or Rome. Do you have any suggestions for how we might use those extra days?