Cinque Terre to Lake Como. Drive or train?? Help!

Possibly, but perhaps you can tell us a bit more about your trip: where are you going first (sounds like the CT) and where are you going after Lake Como? Having a rental car during your time in the CT is a waste of time, it will just sit in the parking lot which is not even close to the village you'll be staying in. But then there is the issue of where to rent the car from, when to rent the car, and what to do with the car when it's no longer needed.

A car is also not an advantage in Lake Como, as the best transportation there is on the lake by the public ferries. Unless you're planning on going from Lake Como to someplace where a car would be an advantage.

It would strictly be for transportation from Cinque Terre to Lake Como. We are planning on taking a train to Cinque Terre from Florence and then a train from Lake Como to Milan.

Going to Milan from Lake Como: are you, possibly, flying out of the Milan Malpensa airport? Or doing something else?

Also, it might help us give you better advice if you could briefly mention your full itinerary, at least that part of it that relates to this area of Italy? Because there might be other transportation options that would work for you.

Which town on Lake Como? You can get a train from Monterosso to Varenna with a change in Milan - total travel time of about 4:30. Did you check the Trenitalia website for train connection times? I'd really try to take the train not hassle with a car. You really won't want one in the Cinque Terre.

What Andrew said.

Ditto to Andrew and Kent: you can do Monterosso >Varenna Esino by rail in 4.5 hours and one train change. Where on Lake Como are you trying to go?

You definitely will not be using a car in the CT, and it wouldn't be much use to you in the Como area if you do your sightseeing by ferry.

Thank you all for the suggestions! We will be staying in Bellagio.

I'm guessing when you were looking at transportation options you were looking at getting to Bellagio, that would account for the longer times you were finding. Yes, it should be about 4.5 hours from CT to Varenna, if you take the route that has one transfer in milan, but you will need to tack on time for the ferry from the Varenna station to Bellagio. It would be a short walk from the train station to the ferry, and then possible wait for the ferry. We'll be going to Lake Como this fall and my preference would have been to stay in Bellagio, but we are only staying for two nights and when I looked at the additional time it would take to get to Bellagio, I settled on staying in Varenna. I can't speak to the ease of the drive, but I don't think a car would be an asset in Bellagio. If you were to rent it for just the one day, you are still talking about getting to the rental car agency and then return at Como with transportation then to your hotel, it might not save that much time. Off the top of my head, the train ticket was about 40-50euro if purchased in advance. (One part of the ticket has a bit of a savings by purchasing in advance)

The ferry we took from Varenna>Bellagio only took about 15 minutes. Yes, depending on when the train arrives, there may be a short wait time for then next one, and some could take longer than others.

http://www.comoanditslake.com/timetableferryboats.htm

The time of year will impact your wait for the ferry. I had noticed that some of the Rome2Rio estimates are 8 hours for the journey from CT to Bellagio. Sometimes I use that as a first look to get some ideas, but there are better tools than Rome2Rio.

We kept our rental car while in Monterosso. The lot was large and easy to get to. Yes, we have driven to all the lakes and to the CT from Milan MXP.