Travel from Nice to Cinque Terre

yes, you can get the train that goes to Genoa then to La Spezia.

Any train to Genoa, then a local train toward La Spezia that will stop at the 5 towns.

For detailed train timetables, go to www.bahn.de and click on the drop-down flag menu for English. After you get summary timetables for Nice to the CT town of your choice, click on the arrow to the left of each departure time to see the connecting points.

Thanks for your replies and I will check the train website. Would any of you know about how long it would take to get from Nice to Cinque Terre or at least have a rough guess?

Teri,

The timetables on the DB site I gave you in my first post will show the total travel time for each departure time. As I said, after you get summary timetables for Nice to the CT town of your choice, click on the arrow to the left of each departure time to see the connecting points.

Trenitalia (Italian National Rail) and SNCF (French National Rail) are having a dispute. I think that is reflected in the times listed on the Trenitalia site. (Not all options between Nice and Ventimiglia--the first connecting point--are listed).

www.bahn.de shows more departure times and shows total travel times ranging from 5 1/2 to 7 hours.

You can take the train from Nice to Levanto, which is just 5 minutes north of the CT, a nice alternative to staying in one of the 5 villages, and it is actually considered part of the national park. The train takes 6 hours leaving Nice at 9 am and arriving at 3 pm. We have stayed at Erba Persa Agriturismo in Levanto, and had a great stay for little money.

After reading Tim's post on the German Rail, I searched and you can get a train from Nice at 10 am and arrive at 3 pm (5 hrs)in Levanto. I couldn't price it, and I'm not certain where you buy this ticket. Perhaps Tim can give some further insight. I will tell you the last time I was in the Nice train station it was packed, allow an hour to buy your ticket, unless you can somehow buy in advance.

Teri,

I took that route last year, and it's an easy trip (unless of course the French trains decide to hold a "strike" the day you're leaving Nice, which was my situation last year - it would have been great if they had told me there was going to be a strike at the time I bought the ticket!!!).

The day before you'll be leaving, go to Nice Ville and purchase a ticket (which will include reservations, if required) for the trip to the C.T. They may insist on only providing a ticket to the nearest large station in Italy (Genoa) and you'll have to buy another ticket there for the trip to the C.T. (not a big deal).

The trip will take about 5-6 hours (depending on which route you choose) with 1-3 changes. Using an "arbitrary" destination of Vernazza, the quickest route I could find (5H:34M) has 3 changes (Ventimiglia, Genoa, Monterosso).

You'll probably change trains at Ventimiglia and again in Genoa. DON'T use air travel for that route - it would be a HUGE waste of money and would probably take longer than the train.

Happy travels!

You have all given me alot of good information. I thought it was going to be a long train ride but anything as long as 8 hours is too long for hubby and we would then have to look into a flight. I think 6 hours and some change is doable though.
I never try and buy train tickets before we leave the U.S. - we are familiar with purchasing individual train tickets as we go and usually buy our departing tickets as we arrive. I am still trying to put the entire trip/route together and I have alternatives to where we start and end our trip so trying to make the route efficient.
Thanks again.

The trip is not that long from Nice. The train from Nice to Genova in Italy is just over 3 hours (3h15) and then from Genova to La Spezia it's one and a half hours. Then there are many trains to hop from one village to the other. It's a beautiful place and not a surprise it was eligible to become a national park.

We found Santa Margerita Ligure to be a fabulous alternative to staying in the Cinque Terre...just fyi. Very easy train connections to the villages and SML is a beautiful port town with great restaurants, lively plazas....just another idea.

For further clarification: The reason you don't see all the departure times for Nice-Ventimiglia right now on the Trenitalia site is because of the dispute Trenitalia and SNCF are having about shared service. The dispute has resulted in Trenitalia showing fewer choices from Nice into Italy. It has also caused the direct train from Nice to Milan to be canceled. Now a change of trains in Ventimiglia is required for that route.

To get fares for Nice-Ventimiglia go to www.tgv-europe.com, a multi-language SNCF site. To keep the site in English and to avoid being bumped to the Rail Europe site which doesn't have complete timetables, choose Great Britain as your country of residence.

To get fares from Ventimiglia to anywhere in Italy go to www.trenitalia.com. Click on the English option at the top of the page.

Buy Nice-Ventimiglia tickets in Nice. Buy tickets from Ventimiglia to anywhere in Italy in Ventimiglia.

Again, all Nice-Ventimiglia departure times are on the DB site and on the tgv-europe site.