Murren to Cinque Terre Italy

You do not want to pick up and drop off a rental car in a different country due to large drop fees.

Your easiest would be to opt for Stresa on Lake Maggiore. Beautiful spot on a lake bigger than Como and right on the main rail line on the way to Milan and the Cinque Terre.

Thank You Green bay.

How do I get to Stresa from Murren via train? I do not see that option.

Kenan - There is no direct connection from Mürren to Stresa via train. However, you can take the line 141 bus to Lauterbrunnen, Bahnhof, walk to Lauterbrunnen train station, take the train to Interlaken Ost, transfer for train to Spiez, from Spiez train to Domodossola, then from there connect to the train for Stresa, Italy.

https://www.myswissalps.com/timetable

I use www.sbb.ch/en to get the route. The fastest way and fewest changes if you want an early start is the train to Gruetschalp at 6:36. The train from Spiez is direct and gets to Stresa at 9:38. There are lots of other connections through the day, taking 3 /2 to 4 hours.

How do I get to Stresa from Murren via train? I do not see that option.

Kennann, where are you looking?
The rail system is a network of interconnections, like roads are. You will never get by car from a small place in one country to a small place in another without turning at at least one road junction. Same for trains. Except for local journeys or big city to big city, expect to change trains, possibly multiple times.
It takes two trains just to get from Mürren to Interlaken (the mouth of the valley), because Mürren is on top of a mountain and only reachable by cable car. Two or three more to get to Stresa.

But YES, you can get from any rail station in Europe to any other.

To find trains, go to the SBB (Swiss Railways) website: https://www.sbb.ch/en
And enter Mürren to Stresa, and a date and time (up to December 2019), and it will find trains.

Finally, make sure you spell place names correctly. This could be your problem.
It is Mürren. The second letter is a ü, NOT a u, that is a different letter. If you don't know how to get a ü on your computer use the alternative spelling Muerren. Murren is WRONG and will not work.

Chris, I use Murren spelling all the time and it works fine.

We did this last fall and broke up the trip with 3 nights in Stresa. If you can, try to give it at least 2 nights.

Tim, unfortunately Murren doesn't work on the SBB site. I just tried it.
If you type Murren, you get a list of options, starting with those actually beginning with "Mur"; Mürren is 4th down the list, after the "Mur" entries. If you just type "Murren{Enter}" you get the first one in the list, "Murrhardt".
Typing Muerren gives Mürren top of the list, so "Muerren{Enter}" does work.

Chris, that’s interesting. I typed Mur on my phone app and Murren BLM is the first entry. I mostly use the phone app now so possibly it’s a bit better than the website.

Tim, that's very strange. I just tried on my phone (SBB App), typed "Murren" and Murrhardt was still top of the list, Mürren 4th, "Mürren BLM" 5th. The difference is on the phone you have to then select from the list, you cannot just type "Enter".
I have seen posts where the poster complained they typed "Murren" and it couldn't find it (and then asked if the train service had ended!!).

Or maybe it has a special "dumb foreigner filter" (no slight intended) that detects you are in Knoxville and I am in Switzerland, and acts differently☺

Same results as Chris F.

kenann,

That's actually a very easy trip, although it will be a full travel day (I've made that trip a number of times). If you'd rather split the trip up with a night or two in an intermediate location, then I would also suggest Stresa as a good location as it's "on the way".

Assuming your destination is Monterosso, one of the shortest and easiest trips will be a departure from Mürren at 07:06, arriving Monterosso at 15:05 (time 7H:59M, 6 changes). The number of changes might at first glance look daunting, but it's actually not that bad. The first three are very easy.

That's a good time-of-day to be arriving in a new place, as your hotel room should be ready. You can drop your kit at the hotel and then do a brief walkabout before enjoying a fine meal in one of the local restaurants.

For researching rail journeys, I'd suggest using the Bahn.de (German Rail) website - https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml . You can buy tickets for Swiss trains when in Switzerland (there are no discounts for advance purchase). If you can commit to specific trains, you can save money with advance purchase tickets on the "fast" Italian trains. Have a look at Trainline.com.