road trip from venice to portofino

A4 VE Mestre-Padova
A13 Padova-Bologna
A1 Bologna-Parma
(Or alternatively, longer but avoids the Bologna area, A4 VE Mestre-Verona, then A22 Verona-Modena, then A1 Modena-Parma)

A14 Parma- La Spezia
A12 La Spezia-Genova
Exit the A12 at Rapallo (before Genova)
Follow directions from Rapallo exit to Santa Margherita Ligure - Portofino.

Plan on at least 4.5 hours at the wheel (plus pit stops).

I never stayed in Portofino overnight. I can hardly afford to park for a few hours in that town.

Thanks Robert, now after reading some posts we are debating whether to drive or catch a train to portofino. How was your drive from venice?
We might just book a hotel in cinque terre and catch a train from there.

I've never driven from Venice to Portofino. I've driven bits and pieces of almost every single freeway in Italy including to Venice many times or to Portofino many times, but never your exact same itinerary from Venice to Portofino in one shot. But I've driven in all those freeways I gave you at one time or another.

The drive is simply freeway driving the same way it would be in North America. From Mestre to Parma it's just boring driving on a flat plain full of farms and factories along the freeway. Once you switch to the A14 near Parma you start going through some mountains as the freeway goes through the Cisa Pass on the Appennines mountain range. There are a few tunnels too. Then on the A12 you go through the Ligurian Appennines and again through lots of tunnels and viaducts.

One thing you will notice about Italian freeways is that Italian engineers don't believe in building freeways with too many curves or uphill climbs. So when Italians see a mountain they just build the freeway straight into it and build a tunnel through, even if it would be easier to go around it. If there is a valley in between mountains they just build a freeway viaduct that is taller than the empire state building. If there are no mountains to go through, they will design the freeway path so that they have to go through them, because Italian engineers go on withdrawal if they don't build tunnels. Here in California we have thousands of miles of freeways, including through mountains, but the only tunnel I know is the Caldecott tunnel east of Oakland and another one in Marin county north of the Golden Gate bridge. When you drive on some freeways in Italy, you will spend a very large portion of your trip underground in some tunnel. Sometimes when I drive from La Spezia to Ventimiglia I feel that I'm inside tunnels longer than I'm outside, and when I'm outside I'm on some viaduct 1500 feet above the bottom of the valley. It's even worse with the trains. Between Florence and Bologna (60 miles) you don't see the sun at all, you're underground the whole trip on the train.

I think Roberto is helping us understand why there are so many trains, and train travelers, in Italy.
(But then why are the high speed auto routes also packed?)
I'm confused. Help, Roberto....

It's a small country with 60 million people, the highest car ownership in Europe after Germany, and with 35 to 40 million visitors a year, many of whom use a car (especially if driving their own from Northern Europe). In addition Italy is the second largest manufacturing country in Europe (again after Germany), but unlike Germany, in Italy freight travels mostly on trucks rather than on rail. That's why on Italian freeways you see more semi-trucks on a two week vacation than you'll ever see in a year at home. Sometimes there are so many to pass that you can never see the end of the long line of trucks. By the way, be careful on those freeways while passing those trucks because those truck drivers switch lanes without caring much if they cut in front of you. The bigger vehicle rules.

Thanks for the explanation, Roberto. It makes sense when you explain it like that.
Now if we could only figure out why there's no parking in Firenze....