travel by train/booking

Hi. None of the tickets 'need' to be bought in advance. The reason to do so, if desired, would be to get a discount price if you are willing to lock in an exact date and time. For most of your trips, you should just wait and buy when there. For the Lucerne to Sestri Levante trip, split this into two tickets - Lucerne to Milan, and Milan to SL (or Manarola - unclear if you are stopping in Sestri Levante for a day or ??). Do not use RailEurope - it is a third party that shows only partial info and has extra fees. For trips in Italy, look on trenitalia.com - change to English in upper right, and be sure to set the 'hour' to 7am to see all trains, use a date in August to get the idea as Sept may only show partial info. The 'base' fare shown is the most you will pay if you buy at last minute in Italy (for instance, Milan all the way to Manarola - 35 Euro in first class). Use station names Milano Centrale, Firenze SMN, Venezia SL. Enjoy your trip!

No need to use Rail Europe. You can buy Luzern to Milano Centrale on SBB and you should get a nice "Special Offer" price by booking now. I believe there is one direct trainnanday and many others with an easy connection at Arth-Goldau.

Then buy from Milano Centrale to Sestri Levante on Trenitalia or trainline.eu.

Yeah, just checked Trainline for 9/13 and got 103.10 EUR from Luzern to La Spezia, per person 1st class

I hope you're not staying in Sestri Levante. Compared to the Cinque Terre villages it's not that nice!

On trenitalia.com/tcom-en enter Luzern (in German) and the name of the village in the Cinque Terre area where you are staying. Each village has its train station and the site will show if and where a change of trains is needed. For example there are some direct trains from Milano Centrale to Monterosso al Mare.

Going from Firenze S.M. Novella to Venezia S.Lucia you can choose between trenitalia.com and www.italotreno.it/en , the private competitor that runs only bullet trains.

First class is a waste of money, but it's up to you. There are no first class cars on many regionale trains.

Sestri Levante isn't very nice close to the train station, but once you get toward the water it is much nicer. Doesn't seem like a terrible place to stay, but I merely walked around it for an hour or so. If the Cinque Terre towns are booked up or too expensive, I'd try for Levanto first, which is in the park and one train stop north of Monterosso.

I am so sorry I wasn't clear. We have booked a wonderful place that we are very excited about in Manarola. I had tried plugging in Manarola as my destination and one of the sites I was on said to put either Sestri Levante or La Spezia in as the destination. So I thought we would have to change to a smaller local train and then continue on to Manarola. We picked Sestri Levante because by arriving there we would get a train ride down the length of most of the CT as a little preview of what each village looked like.

But if you buy your tickets to Sestri Levante, then you will have to stop there and change for sure. You might be adding an unnecessary stop and delay, depending on the train schedule.

It's a better bet to buy a ticket to Genoa, then another ticket to Manarola if need be (although you can perhaps buy the whole ticket with Trainline anyway). Could be you will still need to change trains somewhere south of Genoa to get to Manarola anyway, but Sestri Levante may not be the best place. (Best option might be Genoa to Riomaggiore or Monterosso, then a Cinque Terre Express train on to Manarola.) You'll get the same view from the same tracks on the way down south through the riviera - and just pass through Sestri Levante instead of needing to change there.

You're making it more complicate than it actually is:

1. www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en
2. Enter a date within the next 120 days
3. Pick an early hour of departure from the drop down menu (something like 5 or 6)
4. From: Luzern
5. To: Manarola

The train line that passes through the five Cinque Terre villages is the main line that connects Genoa and Rome, not a secondary one.
The site will suggest the quickest itinerary and will show the number of changes. Click the small arrow pointing down next to that number to see other details.

You are crossing a border using international trains, in this case you'd better avoid resellers' sites and use those of the companies that actually run the trains. Trenitalia sells the tickets of the direct trains from Luzern to Milano Centrale, otherwise you'll have to check on SBB.ch from Luzern to Milano and on trenitalia.com from Milano to Manarola.

daroalb....I tried your exact directions. To the letter. Followed your exact link. It took me to Trenitalia page with boxes for departure and arrival stations, date of travel, number of passengers. My date of travel is 10.09.17....within the 120 days. I put in 5 and 6 AM on two different searches and it came up with the same answer both times!!!!

The "main solutions" that it came up with were only one option. A train leaving Luzern at 16:18 and arriving Manarola at 23:44!

I know this is not correct. I don't know what is wrong. I wish I could get a screen shot of what is showing and enter it in here so that you will know I am not crazy!

I was so excited to get your post. A simple step by step, black and white, straightforward approach. I have gotten times and prices earlier when we were in the initial planning stages, but I don't know what is going on now that I can't get it to show again!

As Lola said, there is only one direct train a day from Lucerne to Milan, in the afternoon. The others all have a connection at Arth-Goldau with the intercity train running from Zurich to Milan. Trenitalia will not show the trains with a connection within Switzerland (the short link between Lucerne and Arth-Goldau).
It will show the trains from Arth-Goldau to Milan.

So you can either buy Lucerne to Milan on SBB, or look on Trenitalia for trains from Arth-Goldau to Monterosso. Then just buy a ticket from Lucerne to Arth-Goldau when you go to the station for the journey.

Trenitalia sells the tickets of the direct trains from Luzern to Milano Centrale, otherwise you'll have to check on SBB.ch from Luzern to Milano and on trenitalia.com from Milano to Manarola.

I'll try to be clearer: Trenitalia can sell/show only direct EC trains from Luzern to Milan (Eurocity #153 if I'm not wrong): if there is only one direct EC train each day, Trenitalia.com will show only that direct train.

There are many other trains to go from Luzern to Milan, but a change somewhere in Switzerland is needed, so you have to use the SBB.ch site to see them.

The Swiss site is very easy to use: purchase the Swiss tickets, note down the arrival time in Milano Centrale and make the purchase for the second leg of your journey on trenitalia.com. Of course you'd better enter September 10 as day of travel on both sites!

LIGHTBULB!!! I now realize that when I was seeing the full schedule it was when I was using a third party site like Eurail or Rail Europe!

I think part of what was confusing me was some early advice that we should book the entire trip from Luzern to Manarola as one so that if our connection was not made due to a late train or something, we would not have any problems. Once I was told we should steer clear of Rail Europe I kept trying to find the whole itinerary and neither SBB or Trenitalia had what I had seen. I think I can do it now! I understand that the Swiss trains run like clockwork to that it would not be an issue making our connection in Milano Centrale. Once there we CAN book the rest of the way straight on to Manarola all on Italian trains.

Halleluia! I can't thank everyone enough for helping out!!!

You will save a lot if you book it now ( or soon), as both SBB and Trenitalia offer special discounts on the cross-border train, and Trenitalia has Super Economy tickets for the IC train from Milan to Monterosso. So you can either

1. Book it all on Trenitalia, from Arth-Goldau to Monterosso ( buy the short regional hops from Lucerne to Arth--Goldau on SBB and Monterosso to Manarolann Trenitalia separately, later). Or

2. By ok Luzern to Milano Centrale on SBB and Milano to Monterosso ( or Manarola if it shows up) on Trenitalia.

There is also a possible 3: trainline.eu might show the whole thing and apparently does offer the advance purchase discounts. I say apparently as I have not booked with them but knowledgeable people here say they do.