Volterra to Santa Margharita Ligure

There is no advantage to going via Siena. You would have to follow a roundabout route and the trip would take a minimum of 8 hours. If you follow the coast and go through Cecina, the trip will take 4 1/2 hours. The leg from Volterra to Cecina will be on a bus. For timetables and fares, go to trenitalia.com. Your route choices are (1) Volterra-Saline-Pomarance to Cecina to Livorno Centrale to Genova Brignole to S. Margherita Ligure-Portofino and (2) Volterra-Saline-Pomarance to Cecina to Chiavari to S. Margherita Ligure-Portofino. If you want to see the fares for the legs on regionale trains and the bus, enter a date within the next seven days. Enter the full departure and arrival station names exactly as I've typed them or the Trenitalia site will give you an "invalid station" message.

There actually is no train station in Volterra so you will have to travel a very short distance to the train station. Tim's information above will work well. However, there is another option. There is a bus from Volterra to Pisa via Pontedera. The journey takes 2hrs20min. This may be the bus run where you may see school children on the bus at certain hours during the day. Here's the link to the bus schedule. http://toscana-toskana.de/volterra-it/bus.htm#Firenze%20à%20Volterra Once in Pisa, you can take the train to Santa Margherita Ligure-Portofino. This train journey will take about 2.5hrs. Expect a train change during the run.

The route via Cecina is faster than the route via Pontedera (4 hours vs 5 hours), but it's also more expensive. Both routes require multiple connections. You can catch a 9:00 bus from Volterra to the Cecina train station, connecting to a 10:22 train to Santa Margherita Ligure that arrives 12:59. Cost is EUR 29.80 for train plus the bus. A few years ago I did the route via Pontedera that Larry suggests (although in reverse), and would recommend switching to the train in Pontedera. If you took the 7:52 bus from Volterra and connected to the 10:14 train, you'd arrive at 12:59 on the same train as from Cecina. Cost is EUR 25.60 plus the bus. If you took the 10:05 bus from Volterra and connected to the 12:14 train, you'd arrive at 15:05. That route has the lowest cost, EUR 11.40 for the train plus the bus. Don't recall the exact cost of the bus, but think it was around EUR 6 (probably slightly higher now). You can research bus schedules at www.cpt.pisa.it. Cecina bus is #790 and Pontedera bus is #500.

Thank you! This is all very helpful :)