Eural Pass for Local Cinque Terre Train Service

Douglas,

From what I recall from a previous trip, you can use your Rail Pass for the local Cinque Terre trains (provided the Pass covers Italy). However, whether this is a good idea would depend on which Rail Pass you're using.

For example, if you were just planning on making a trip from one of the villages to another and were travelling with a Flex Pass, it wouldn't really be cost effective to use one day of the pass for such a short run. Buying a P-P ticket would be the better option. However if you had a "Global Pass" or one providing unlimited use for xx days, it could be used.

If you were arriving in the Cinque Terre from another point in Europe and the C.T. train was the last leg of the journey, then a Flex pass could be used for the trip from La Spezia to whichever of the five villages you were going to.

I'm not sure if I've worded this clearly, but hopefully one of the rail experts here can provide a few comments.

Happy travels!

If you determine that your Eurail pass isn't an option for you, you may also wish to check out the Cinque Terre Card, which can be customized to fit the length of your visit (i.e. 1 day, 3 day, 1 week). In addition to rail, I believe it covers admission fees to the hiking trails between the villages. An alternative to the card is buying point-to-point tickets. I recall them to be very inexpensive - something like 1-2 Euros per trip.

As has been mentioned, yes you can use it but you may spend more than you need to. I travelled on a Eurail flexi pass. The first day I reached down required a day on my pass anyways, so the rest of the day I travelled on the trains with my pass. For the following days, I used the Cinque Terre pass that gave me access both to the hiking trails, and unlimited train travel as this was cheaper than using more of my Eurail flexi pass days.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful information. We will be using our rail pass earlier in the day when we take the train down from Santa Margherita in Ligure (about 40 minute ride) to Levanto and switching to the local Cinque Terre train. Had it not been for the fact that we were already using our pass earlier in the day, I would have opted for a P2P or the 1 day Cinque Terre pass.

Thanks again, I appreciate all your input!

Ken and Michael are correct. If you have a Eurail flex pass, you may not want to waste a day on a train trip that costs 1.5Euro. You can buy the Cinque Terre TRENO card. Note that there used to be two different Cinque Terre cards. One is the Cinque Terre card which is good for the parks but not the trains. You want the Cinque Terre TRENO card. This card is good for unlimited travel on both the trains, the park trails and the mini-buses in the towns. It is not good on the ferry between the towns. The Cinque Terre TRENO card has the Trenitlaia logo on it.

CLICK HERE to see what they look like.