Train from Rome to Monterosso in July

There is a timetable change on June 10. Use only trenitalia.com/tcom-en, they run the trains and will decide the new summer schedules.

For now make your plans using a day before June 10; keep things easy and just enter Monterosso, Roma Termini and Firenze SM Novella into the from/to fields. The site will work out the best routes for you depending on the departure hour. Of course trenitalia.com will also display if, where and how they'll have to transfer.

Cindy,

The easiest method to travel that route is to take one of the direct trains from Roma Termini to La Spezia Centrale, which have a travel time of about 3H:45M. It's a short run via Regionale train from La Spezia to Monterosso.

Although there's a schedule change in June as mentioned above, you may be able to buy discounted tickets for the Rome - La Spezia segment soon. There don't appear to be any shown on the Trenitalia website yet, but these may appear in the next few weeks or so.

The tickets for the segment from La Spezia to Monterosso can be bought online or locally. My suggestion would be to either buy these in Rome or even after arrival at La Spezia, as there are no discounts on these. However one important point to note - if using locallly purchased Regionale tickets, BE SURE to validate these prior to boarding the train on the day of travel or there's a risk of hefty fines, which will be collected on the spot!

I find that www.trainline.eu is a good site to purchase train tickets in Italy, as they sell tickets for major rail networks at the same price as the networks. Your family can use either Trenitalia or Italo on the Firenze SMN to Venezia S. Lucia segment.

Monterosso to Florence is an easy trip, but will involve at least one change, perhaps at La Spezia or Pisa Centrale. Check the Trenitalia website using a date in May on the same day of the week they'll be travelling, and that should provide a good idea on the departure times and trains on that route.

Awesome! That is exactly what I need to know! I love this forum!!

Cindy, My wife and I did a similar route last September on our first trip to Italy (except we stayed in Florence for 3 nights along the way). It was also our first time using European trains. At first, I felt a little overwhelmed with the entire Trenitalia process. But I broke it down into smaller pieces, and it worked well for us. We trained from Rome to Vernazza and back. We took the high speed train from Rome to Florence. It was very easy and just cool to say we took the bullet train. You could do that and then connect in Florence to La Spezia which could save some time. In La Spezia, change trains to the CT local which will probably be PACKED. We bought all of our tickets in advance, just to be safe. We were worried about connections, thinking the stations would be like NYC Penn Station. But to our surprise, the stations were super easy to navigate, and we easily made connections in La Spezia, Pisa and Florence that were sometimes less than 10 minutes apart.

"You could do that and then connect in Florence to La Spezia which could save some time."

I doubt that it will be faster to travel to Monterosso via Florence, especially as the trains from Florence to La Spezia are often the slower Regionale trains. AFAIK, the coastal route using a direct train is the fastest and easiest option.