Night train from Cinque Terre to Venice

Where in the CT?

It can't be more than five hours or so with a couple of changes from La Spezia. When would you sleep?

We will be staying in Vernazza and it doesn't really matter what time as long as we can sleep on the train (without too many transfers) and not arriving in Venice at 1 or 2 in the morning!

You have multiple changes to get between the two: at least three trains making a night trip a nightmare. The schedules don't change much, so what you see on the Trenitalia website right now is valid for May. You can go VERY early in the morning so you arrive in Venice by early afternoon, or leave around 18:00 and arrive around midnight. In any case, the best you will do is catnap.

No night options, sorry.
The portion from Florence to Vernazza is not a route where night trains even operate.
Use Trenitalia.com and use a date in the next seven days since regional train schedules are shown only up to 7 days forward. The schedule for May is the same as March. To Vernazza it's a 6-7 hour trip with at least 2 train changes.

If there's any way at all to rearrange your itinerary to avoid that travel, you should do it. A good place to go between those two is Florence. As pointed out, there is no night train option.

The purpose of a night train is when you have great distances to cover with an eight to twelve hour train ride. CT to Venice is not that far and can easily be done in an afternoon or early morning.

audrey,

As the others have mentioned, that's NOT a good route to use a night train! If travelling during the day time, the trip will be as short as 4H:52M with 3 changes, so a night train is not the best idea. That trip ranges (during the day) from about 4H:52M to 6H:31M, depending on which train is used. While there is a night train departing Vernazza at 23:54 and arriving Venice at 10:35, it includes a four hour layover in La Spezia in the middle of the night, which would be brutal.

Although the summer schedules aren't posted yet, it's not likely they will be much different than the present schedules. I'd suggest using a departure from Vernazza at 09:28, arriving Venezia S.L. at 14:20 (time 4H:52M, changes at La Spezia, Pisa and Firenze). That will get you to Venice in the early afternoon, when your hotel room should be ready for you, and you'll still have time for a bit of exploration.

Happy travels!

Thanks everyone for sharing all the information. Looks like we will have to figure something else instead. I was hoping that if we could travel overnight and arrive Venice early in the morning, we will have more time to explore the town since we only have two nights there.

Too bad about having only two nights in Venice. In that case, do catch the earliest train possible to get there around lunchtime.