TRAINS FROM ROME TO CINQUE TERRE

Hi Alan

We are doing this trip in April and check trenatalia's web site. The schedule I printed is a train leaving Termini at 0946 to La Spezia arriving at 1351. Connection to Vernazza at 1406 arriving Vernazza at 1428. This train does not go via Florence.

Go here for the most user-friendly Europe train schedule http://bahn.hafas.de/bin/query.exe/en and you'll see that there are trains that by-pass Florence. Rail Europe doesn't show all schedules.

I did. You don't have to go thru Florence. Search for trains to La Spezia. Once you get there - take the "milk trains" into the CT towns. I am pretty sure it is detailed in the RS book.

Alan,

As Kent mentioned, there are trains that go directly to the Cinque Terre. Check the website that Kent listed.

There are direct trains (no changes) from Roma Termini to La Spezia, with a travel time of about 4 hours. They travel inland for part of the trip and then break out towards the coast as they approach La Spezia. Upon arrival at La Spezia, just transfer to the smaller local trains. Departure times for those are all listed in the Guidebooks.

Note that with the direct trains, reservations are normally compulsory.

Happy travels!

Certainly never trust Raileurope to give you a decent itinerary, unless you are travelling between very major destinations. They specialize in selling high cost tickets on premium trains, and to be honest, I am not surprised that they did not route you through Florence, up to Milan, then to Genoa and back down the coast. As mentioned, use Bahn.de for nearly any destination in Europe, for Italy only, Trenitalia is still my preference. I believe the most common route would take you up the coast, through Pisa (stop for a couple hours and see the leaning tower) then La Spezia, where usually you catch a slow regional train that stops in each town.

There are direct trains from Rome to La Spezia Centrale where you would then transfer for the short local train into the CT. Or, often, the same train you are on simply proceeds into the CT. It's just that when looking up the train schedules, you get different looks when putting in La Spezia Centrale as the destination than if you put in Vernazza.

The train from Rome actually goes west to the west coast of Italy where it stops early in the run at Civitavecchia (a cruise port city). None of these runs are non-stops and most are on ICPlus trains which require reservations. The trip takes just over 4 hours.

CLICK HERE to see for yourself. Click on details and then on the highlighted train number under "train".