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La Spezia, Pisa, Or Livorna as a central location???

Posted by (Middletown, CT, USA) on

Request for Itinerary Advice and manly advice on central location :

We need help deciding where would be the best place to stay consecutively for 4 nights, as a good central location to do day trips in North Western Italy. Before these nights, we will be coming from Rome, so where we stay needs to be convenient with getting there via train from Rome.

And we have talked about doing different nights in each place, but we have decided it would be best to stay in one place for all 4 nights.

We want to See Florence, Pisa, Manarola (In La Spezia), and possibly San Gimignano, if not too far.

We are considering staying In Pisa, La Spezia, or Livorna???

Pisa seems to be the most convenient in terms of Public Transport (which we will only be using), but I don't know how nice it would be to stay here- Would a coastal town be nicer for the town itself?

However, most important is not how nice the town is, but how easy it is to reach the other places. I am just a little worried trying to reach La Spezia or Livorna from Rome???

If there is anyone who knows Italian train systems and has done this sort of trip, that would be helpful- THANK YOU!

Posted by
6898 posts

Jo, we have stayed in La Spezia on one visit. We stayed at the Hotel Astoria a few blocks from the train station but the Hotel Firenze e Continental is just a few hundred feet from the train station. Livorno is quite a train ride. IMHO, there is nothing great in Pisa except for the leaning tower and the adjacent Field of Miracles. You might look at Viareggio. Viareggio is a very nice area with great beaches. It's closer to the CT than Pisa by about 20 minutes. On the reverse, it's 20 minutes to either Pisa or Lucca and 1hr40min from Florence. San Gimignano will be a bit tougher to get to. No train station there but there is great bus service from Florence. It will be about a 5.0hr-6.0hr round trip to San G. on the train/bus.

Posted by
8371 posts

I'd suggest staying in Florence city center. You could take a day trip via bus to Siena. You could also rent a car for a day and drive down to San Gimignano and Volterra.

If you had more days, I'd suggest you stay in Florence 3 nights and move to the Tuscan countryside 30 or so miles south of Florence to an agriturismo for a few nights. That's a great area to do day trips to the cities around Chianti.

Posted by
16238 posts

Stay in Florence and visit those locations from there.
Manarola (or any of the Cinque Terre villages) is a long day trip from Florence (2.5+ hours on way) but doable.
Where are you going afterwards, going back to Rome?
You could do:
Rome
train to Cinque Terre, spend one night
Train from Cinque Terre to Florence. Must change trains in Pisa. Take advantage of the change in Pisa to visit the leaning tower and the cathedral for a couple of hours. There is nothing else to see in Pisa. While you visit Pisa you can leave your luggage at the luggage storage inside the Pisa Central train station. After visiting, you proceed to Florence and spend the rest of your nights there. After Florence, you take a train to Rome (if that is where you must return afterwards).
You can do the same itinerary in reverse (Rome to Florence to Cinque Terre to Rome) and if you have seen Florence before, you can spend one extra night at the Cinque Terre and one less in Florence.

Posted by
31 posts

Thanks for the Advice everyone!!! Very Helpful! I think we will stay in Florence!

Cheers!

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