Early morning train from Sorrento to Naples and on to Florence. Store bags in locker at Florence train station to take a break and walk around Florence for a few hours. Then train to Montessoro.>>

Sorrento - Naples - 90 mins

changing trains at Naples - 30 mins.

Naples to Florence - 3 hours

florence to La Spezia - 2 hours [plus about 30 mins to get to Monterosso, allowing for changing trains]

I couldn't find the timetable for the CT trains on Trenitalia.it but I did a bit of hunting round and found this:

http://www.cinqueterre.eu.com/images...table-2013.pdf

i found it here:

http://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/cinque-terre/train - looks to be an interesting and useful website.

The main point that I am making is that Sorrento to Monterosso is 7 hours by train, plus however long you need to wait for connections etc. Not much opportunity to look round Florence, and you'll be pretty tired and fed up by the time you get to the CT.

I am really having trouble understanding why you would prefer to do this rather than going to Sorrento first, then stopping off in Rome so that you can go straight to the CT - there are in fact direct trains from Roma termini to La Spezia that take just about 4 hours. you could get an early train and be there for lunchtime.

Annhig, I am so totally with you on that one. It was the first suggestion I made to the OP, and even though I made a mistake on the number of days, it still makes sense to go to Sorrento first, followed by Rome.

Concur with Sassafras and Annhig that going to Sorrento first and then returning to Rome after AC makes more sense.

I also think you are trying to see too many places in a very short time, but it's your vacation. The rearranged itinerary would seem to me to give you more "quality time" and less travel time.

Sassafrass/dwdvagmundo - as you say it is of course the OP's trip but like me, you have probably done things on trips where you wish like heck that someone had suggested doing it differently.

We, for example, arrived on a flight from the UK into Toronto airport, and complete with our then 1 year old child, climbed into our hire car, and set off from the airport to drive up the side of Lake Ontario to Kingston. [yes, that's right, a 3 hour drive]. If only someone had pointed out to me that setting off to drive for 3+ hours on the wrong side of the road after a transatlantic flight was a really silly idea, let alone doing it at 5pm when the Toronto rush-hour was in full flow. Who knew that there was an 18 lane highway just outside the airport? I'd never seen one let alone driven on one. it took us 2 days to recover!

this of course was pre-fodors - nowadays I have far less excuse.