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Getting from Lucerne to Cinque Terre

Posted by on

Hello! This is my first time posting on this forum, so bear with me. I'm planning my first trip to Italy and Switzerland this summer and wanted to get some advice from this knowledgable and friendly community of travelers.

I'm particularly in need of help regarding travel between Lucerne and Cinque Terre. I plan to purchase a 4 day Swiss Rail Pass, and I'm wondering if my best option is to use the rail pass on my last day to travel from Lucerne to Milan, then from Milan to Monterosso. Can I use the Swiss Rail Pass in this manner? Is it only valid to the border town of Brig, and from there will I need to purchase Italian passes? If so, should I buy those in advance or the day of?

I wanted to fly to save time, but the one way flights from Zurich are a bit expensive and I figured it might be better to get as much value from the Swiss Pass as possible.

Thanks! Any advice is much appreciated.

Posted by
8889 posts

First look at this map, which shows all the rail lines in Switzerland and the validity of the Swiss pass: https://www.swisspasses.com/railpass/overviewmap_en.pdf
As you can see from this map, the Swiss pass is valid a bit past Brig, to Domodossola. But that is irrelevant, because from Luzern to Milan the quickest way is via Arth-Goldau, the Gotthard tunnel, Lugano, Chiasso, Milan (see map). In this case the Swiss pass is valid to Chiasso.
There are some direct trains from Luzern to Milan, but you usually have to change at Arth-Goldau onto a train coming from Zürich.

Second, Italian passes are rarely good value. You can buy advance purchase tickets from Italian Railways on the internet (print-at-home tickets) which are a lot cheaper. You just have to commit to a particular train up to 120 days in advance.
Read this webpage for lots of info: http://seat61.com/Italy.htm
This website is the best resource on the web for trains.

When you look up train times and prices, you need to know the name of the station, in the local language. Luzern is easy, it only has one station called "Luzern". Cinque Terre is as the name suggests, 5 towns, each has a station. You need to decide which one you want to get off the train at, and look that up.

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