Northern Italy-Lake Como-Cinque Terre

Driving to Cinque Terre you will experience narrow and winding roads that may be difficult at times and parking may be hard to find, but the views will be wonderful! You can reach every village by car, park at the entrance of the villages and then walk from there. If you are an experienced driver and don't mind these conditions, then driving won't be a problem.

It may be easier to take the train into La Spezia from either Bologna or Varenna and then go into the five villages that way.

Bologna is a transportation hub, I would take a train from Bologna to La Spezia and a train from Bologna to Lake Como. You can check rome2rio.com for comparison of train and drive times.

All of your destinations are served by trains running at least hourly and they're relatively inexpensive, so that's usually our recommendation; see full 2nd-class fares on our maps. Travel from Bologna to Vernazza, for instance, does require two train connections, or Bologna to Monterosso can occasionally be done with only one connection. So that's a little trade-off versus the issue of finding and paying for parking. If you're returning more than once to Bologna as a home base, then that will probably help you to pack light, leaving the dirty clothes behind. The car-vs-train convenience may be slightly different if you're filling the car with three or four people.

Trains connect all your destinations. If you do decide to rent a car, you can park under the Centralstazione in La Spezia and take the local train into CT. As for Varenna, when you exit the autostrada, you descend into the village. The lake road will take you to the piazza in front of the Chiesa di San Giorgio and you can park there. If it is full, you will have to take what you can find along the lake road. In Bologna, like most major Italian cities, I would park on the edge of the city and bus into Bologna Centre.

All of the places you listed are well served by trains, so there's no need to rent a car. The trips will be much easier by train.

Are you intending to do these "trips" just for the day, or spend some time in the three places you mentioned?

Thank you everyone for giving us some great guidance.

i used trains exclusively after landing in Pisa. We traveled the CT and stayed out of the 5 villages at Moneglia and it was a breeze using the trains. It took like 10 minutes each day to train to the CT village we chose. We also went north a few times for hiking to the Punta Marana and Portofino. We took the train from CT to Lucca and spent a few days there and then a half an hour train ride back to Pisa airport. Trains were easy and we dont live in an area where passenger trains or subways operate.