Traveling from Rome to Florence to Cinque Terre to Lake Como to Venice

You will be advised to cut this way back as right now there are only four full days on this trip with some excessive travel times.

You will mainly see highways or train tracks. Cut a place or two out of your itinerary.

Traveling from Lake Como to Venice is ambitious, and you will have to cut short your already brief visit to Lake Como! Why not skip Venice, spend a ittle more time in Lake Como and fly out of Zurich?

Unfortunately we've already purchased our flights and they are nonrefundable!

For many people, it would be too ambitious. But you know yourselves / your style and preferences. Maybe you love being on the go, and get itchy with more than one day in a place? One factor is whether you enjoy train / travel time. CT to Lake Como and Lake Como to Venice are longer travel times - 4 to 6 hours depending on connections. If you look forward to the time in transit and you are viewing this as a 'sampling' trip, your itinerary may work fine.

If you decide to cut something, maybe cut Lake Como; in mid October it may be cool there. If so, an alternative would be Rome, CT, Florence, Venice in that order. But don't cut just because of our preferences; you know your style. Whatever you decide, it sounds great; enjoy your trip!

You're only giving yourselves 1.5 days max each in Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre and Lake Como, and only a partial day in Venice. While still a bit ambitious, you might instead consider dropping Lake Como and doing Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence and Venice in that order. That order will cut way down on your travel time, especially if you take one of the direct Freccia trains from Rome to La Spezia to reach Cinque Terre.

Thank you for the help Frank. With keeping the order you have listed Does it make sense at all to get rid of Cinque Terre and add Lake Como? Would that still keep travel time down? (Separate Question) With keeping the order you have listed is it still a little ambitious if we were to add Portofino after Cinque Terre? Thank you for the help

Your flights are ideal. Nine nights, Rome, Florence and Venice. Two full days in each city, which isn't much. Train schedules and tickets here:

https://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en

https://www.italotreno.it/en

I would suggest you have only one 'water front' location, Cinque Terre OR Lake Como

Your order of travel is OK, its just one destination too many, for the time available

My $0.02

Hi sescripp -

I'll go along with Frank and Bob for Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence and Venice, in that order. Como (I'll say Varenna as that's a popular landing spot for the lake) is a hike from Venice and it would be advantageous to cut down the amount of time spent sitting on trains: not the best use of what little time you have. You can get to Venice from Florence in 2 hours, no changes. It's a minimum of 4 hours and 1 change from Varenna-Esino. It's at least 4.5 hours to Varenna-Esino from Monterosso (CT) with one change,

Going Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence and Venice, your only long train journey would be Rome> the CT. You do not want to arrive in the CT late at night as most accommodations are small and don't have 24/7 desk services:

Skip Portofino: it's too much like the C.T. but even more expensive and offers little to do. Besides, we all think you should reduce the # of locations you have versus keeping that number the same. The classic first-timer's trip for # of days you are working with is Rome>Florence>Venice, 3,3,3 or 4,3,2 but I understand that you're wanting more water in the picture than just Venice so....

Regarding the CT? You'll want to jump on finding accommodations right away.

I'm in the Rome->Florence->Venice camp. Here's a suggestion:
October 6th: Arrive in Rome early AM
October 7th: Rome
October 8th: Rome, evening train to Florence
October 9th: Florence
October 10th: Florence
October 11th: Florence, day trip to Tuscany winery
October 12th: Early train to Venice
October 13th: Venice
October 14th: Day Trip from Venice
October 15th: Fly home early evening

You could substitute Lake Como for Cinque Terre, in which case I would travel Rome to Florence to Lake Como to Venice. Total travel time would be about the same as with Cinque Terre except that Lake Como to Venice will become the longest leg of the trip. Whatever you decide, allocate 2 overnights to each destination and add the 9th night as a third night in the one of most interest.

Thank you everyone for your help! We decided to Nix Cinque Terre and do Rome, Florence, Lake Como and Venice. It was a hard choice to make but appreciate all of your help! Let me know if you have any suggestions in any of our now 4 destinations :)