Milan to Cinque Terre

Brenda,

1. When are you planning to take this trip?
2. How many nights will you have, not counting your travel days to/from Italy?
3. Will this be your first time visiting Italy?
4. Which town/village do you plan to stay in while in Cinque Terre?
5. Do you have any good guidebooks on Italy?
6. What are your interests?

So you have ten days (nine nights?) total for Italy, and you wish to spend 5-6 nights in the Cinque Terre and the remaining 4 in Venice? Or do you have more time than that and other places you want to visit?

I'd work backwards. What time is your flight out of Milan home? If it's before noon, you'll probably want to spend the last night in or near Milan. Otherwise, if your flight home is late enough in the afternoon that you can start elsewhere, I'd probably end the trip in Venice and take an early train to Milano Centrale (and from there the Malpensa Express train to the airport).

That means you'd take a long train (with connections) a few days prior from the Cinque Terre to Venice.

And then you'd start with a train from Milan (Malpensa Express to Milano Centrale, from there a train to the Cinque Terre).

Questions: which town in the Cinque Terre? They are all nice in their own way.

I might suggest only three nights in the Cinque Terre and another 2-3 in another riviera town like Camogli or Santa Margherita Ligure, both lovely towns to the north of the Cinque Terre, which is very touristy in season, whereas to the north it will be a bit quieter and give you a different perspective.

Use the website www.trainline.eu to look at train tickets for both Italian operators (Trenitalia and Italo) or go to their individual websites to book tickets. If you care about saving money, book them (except regional trains) a few few months in advance...except for the first train from Milan, because it's hard to time the layover between landing in Milan and taking a train out, because you could be late and miss the train (and your tickets become worthless). Many find it better to buy their tickets last-minute as soon they land so won't have to worry about missing a train if they are late.

(using Cinque Terre as home base)

CT is not a 'home base'. It is a place to be, not use as a springboard for exploration of the region

Are there other things we should be asking or considering?

Spend 3 nights in CT and spend the rest of the non-Venice time in Florence

When are you planning to take this trip? March 7-17
How many nights will you have, not counting your travel days to/from Italy? 8
Will this be your first time visiting Italy? No, but I was there previously on a school tour.
Which town/village do you plan to stay in while in Cinque Terre? La Spezia
Do you have any good guidebooks on Italy? No
What are your interests? Vineyards, museums, sightseeing

Andrew, you are right, Milan flight is 9 am so there's no way we can be anywhere other than near the airport.

"The place we are staying in La Spezia says: "TRAIN STATION: 11 minutes walking from the apartment or direct bus (3 stops) – Trains for Cinque Terre (5 min from La Spezia), Pisa, Florence, Rome, Lucca, Milan
FERRY STATION: 11 minutes walking from the apartment or direct bus (2 stops) - Ferries for Cinque Terre, Portovenere, Palmaria, Lerici."
"The world-famous Cinque Terre can easily be reached either by train (during the day and the night there are several trains departing from La Spezia to Cinque Terre) or by ferry or by car. It is advisable to use the train or ferry because it is faster and it doesn't impose any parking frustrations or problems. Is it your plan to visit Cinque Terre and the Gulf of Poets (La Spezia, Lerici, Portovenere)??? La Spezia is the ideal base, starting at 5 minutes by train from the Cinque Terre and with all the conveniences of a city. Many of our guests use our apartment as a base for exploring Italy: with high-speed trains from La Spezia in one day, you can visit Florence (1h 35min), Rome (2h 56min), Pisa (38 min), or Milan (2h 49min) at a very accessible price".

It looks like it is 4 hours from Milan and we'd like to see Venice and Florence but that might be a tall order?

Brenda, I love the Cinque Terre - have been there three times, but I'm not sure I'd spend six days there in March. In fact, I might not go at all. And if so, La Spezia would be low on my list of towns to stay in, especially off season. I'd stay in one of the five villages or Levanto, unless you really have a specific reason to stay there.

With one night in Milan at the end plus a desire to see Florence, Venice and the Cinque Terre? It's really going to be difficult see them all. You have only seven additional nights? I'd probably do two in Venice, two in Florence, two in the Cinque Terre...and add one night in either Venice or Florence, depending on what you really want to see in each place. And that's really going to be a quick pace with a lot of moving around. Many would suggest dropping at least one stop to slow it down.

In fact, I might try be flexible and make the Cinque Terre visit "weather permitting" and not commit to it - book a place you can cancel near the last minute if it looks like bad weather.

The ideal base to see the Cinque Terre villages is one of the Cinque Terre villages not a former Navy base town with nothing to see.

Staying in La Spezia You'll see the Cinque Terre just like the crowds of cruise passengers, but in the evening they enjoy free drinks on board while you'll have to walk around the above mentioned ugly town.

Note that the schedules of direct trains connecting Milano Centrale and Monterosso in March will be uploaded on trenitalia.com on December 9, 2018. Same for local trains between the five villages.

High speed trains obviously do not call at La Spezia.

Would stay in one of the 5 towns ; not in La Spieza. I only drove through La Spieza but it sure did not seem like a place a tourist would want to stay.
Would not use it as a base to see anything else, Cinque Terre thankfully is a little isolated/hard to get to ; making it a good place to stay/visit but a bad base to use for daytrips.

Once you make that change (which you really should do) you likely won't want to spend all 5 nights on the Cinque Terre ; maybe 3 if you like hiking ; 2 if you don't plan on hiking and then pick another place for the other 2-3 nights ; maybe Florence.

Oooh, Brenda - I wish you had come here, and had bought a Rick Steves Italy, before you booked anything. Can you cancel some or all of your La Spezia stay without penalty? If you will pay a penalty, can you live with it?

As said above, La Spezia is not a nice base for the Cinque Terre, and it's not convenient for other places. A three hour train ride, each way, is not the way to see places like Rome and Florence that have so much, and where you want to be in the evening after the day trip crowds die down.

As for your flights, the London layover should be fine. You only have to go through security, not immigration or customs, and if there's a problem, they'll put you on a later flight. But the JFK layover is very tight. Since it's your point of entry into the US, you have to go through immigration (passport control), then pick up all your checked bags, then go through customs. Only then can you deposit your bags at the recheck desk, then go through security for your next flight. How long all of this takes cannot be predicted, but JFK is huge and busy, so assuming a quick passage through it is not recommended. If you don't have Global Entry, be sure to use the Mobile Passport app, which (at least the times I've used it) has saved lots of time.

Thanks everyone, I will not pull the trigger yet then.
I appreciate it!
Brenda

Thanks everyone, I will not pull the trigger yet then.

Good call, Brenda. There's no way I'd spend 5-6 nights in La Spezia in March. It's just not a good base for exploring other locations, and the coastal weather in March could be sketchy anyway. Also, ferries do not run in early- to-mid March, and it's not a good 'vineyard' month in Tuscany. For museums and sightseeing? I'd spend your time in Florence and Venice with your pre-flight night in Milan.