Train or car to Monterosso?

No reason to rent a car. You won't need it at the 5 Terre. Not sure which airport in Milan you will be arriving at, but from the Milano Centrale station you can catch a train to Monterosso. Some requiring no changes along the way.

Merete, tourist cars are not permitted in any of the five CT towns. In Monterosso, there are a couple of parking lots that you can drive to and some hotels have small parking areas for their guests but no tourist cars in the towns. Also, the road connecting the towns in the hills above can be quite adventurous. Take the train. You will first have to take the train from Malpensa to Milano Centrale and then take the train to Monterosso. About 4.5hrs by train. Fare is about 20Euro depending on the type of train you book. Try for the intercity train runs between Milano Centrale and Monterosso with no train changes. They run about every 2 hours. There are other runs but they have trains changes along the run. You can see all of this on www.trenitalia.com

Great, thanks! train IT will be!:-)Do you know where to find train schedules?

Merete, I agree with the others and would highly recommend travel by train. A car in the Cinque Terre is about as useful as a boat anchor. Only service vehicles and Taxi's are permitted in Monterossso, so your car would be sitting in a lot gathering dust and you'd be paying for parking. Travelling between the five towns of the C.T. is very easy and cheap via the local trains. Tickets are as cheap as €1.80 PP on some legs. You could hike or take the train in one direction, and take the boat back (weather dependant). That's a great way to see the towns from the water. As you're coming from Oslo, could you clarify which airport you're arriving at? If arriving at MXP, will that be Terminal 1 or 2? The trip from Milano Centrale to Monterosso is very easy. The easiest trips will be via direct train, rather than those with changes. There's a direct train at 14:05, but I doubt whether you'll be able to connect with that one. There are others with changes after that (travel times with those are considerably longer), but the next direct train isn't until 16:05, which is more likely. Those times are taken from current schedules for a Wednesday, but I doubt they'll change much next year. Where are you planning to stay in Monterosso? Happy travels!

Merete, the train schedules can be found on www.trenitalia.com. At this time, you won't see accurate schedules for the first half of 2014 until Trenitalia refreshes their schedules about Dec 12 of this year. Also, you may not see the fares from Malpensa Aeroporto to Monterosso as the small train system from the airport to Milano Centrale is not run by Trenitalia. Still, I think you can buy the tickets to Monterosso at the Malpensa station. Base fare are from Milan to Monterosso is 26Euro. If you can make it, you might look into the 16:05 departure from Milan to Monterosso. No train changes. You might be able to make an earlier 15:05 run but this run has 2 train changes and costs more as you will be riding a fast train for a few stops. Your choice. Here's a snapshot of what I see. http://gyazo.com/919bf857b4c6d9c7a3f2477d2f231e52

Even though the schedule is not out yet, you can still get an idea of the trains and times and arrivals by train. Go to www.trenitalia.com and use Milano Centrele and Monterosso. For the date use the same day of the week you want to travel but with this weeks date. If May 28th is a Thursday then use Oct 31st on the trenitalia website to see the schedule and all the connections. When the schedule changes, odds are the times will slightly change but not that much.