Cinque Terre: Levanto or Monterosso base.
 

My wife and I are visiting the Cinque Terre for the first time and will be arriving by auto. We are considering Levanto or Monterosso due to their accessibility to both Cinque Terre and to Portofino. Any suggestions on which or another location? Any hotel recommendations and restraunts at these locations?

I am visiting the CT for the first time<BR>in October, but using Portovenere as a<BR>base for visiting the five villages and<BR>other cities in Liguria. I have booked<BR>a room at the Grand Hotel, as recommended by friends who have visited<BR>before.<BR><BR><BR><BR>

The Villa Margherita in Levanto is great value and the town is easier to access by car.

Bob's so right. We just got back from Levanto &amp; Varenna &amp; Venice. Villa Margherita was excellent. $85E, wonderful hosts, charming garden to drink Amarone and eat cheese, non-touristy, great restaurants with wonderful pesto and fish, sat outside drinking G&amp;T's by the water and watched the boys play soccer, beautiful sunsets. Not crowded and just a few minutes to the main CT towns. Don't miss Taverma Garibaldi on via Garibaldi - best pizza ever. Couldn't even get it in the first night so we stumbled into La Scaletta , at Via Dante Aligheri 10 for seafood and pesto - best pesto I've ever had. I coulda cried. A rather ancient couple in the kitchen - I could have kissed them. In Varenna on Lake Como the Milano was almost a ditto of above - but no pesto or boys playing soccer. We loved them both. We asked if they could make a reservation at Isola Comacina - a little restaurant on the only island on Lake Como. Lunch went on for hours, $54E price fixed, but worth every penny. Beautiful spot, incredible history, VERY special spot. In Venice the Accademia in Dosadoro was a more quiet neighborhood (despite lots of students). Some of the staff were a little snooty, lots of Americans, but I can't whine about that too much since we are them. Couldn't beat the location. Finally, Hotel Cervo,(www.hotelcervo.it) 5 minutes from Milan Aiport was quite a find. Very nice staff. Pretty reasonable, very simple rooms, but shuttle picks you up and drops you off at the airport for $3E, and they have a damn fine restaurant too. We got stuck in traffic going into Milan on the shuttle, so I wouldn't want to try to get out to the airport in the early a.m. for a flight. Getting there in the evening gave us time to unwind, drink our last wonderful wine, and not worry about missing our flight the next morning. As an added bonus, we didn't have a drop of rain in 10 days, and it was unusually warm. I had to hike the CT in my undershirt. Bummer man.

Wow Shamrock--I guess we pulled your chain. Great input !

Here is another vote for Villa Margherita in Levanto. When four of visited a couple of years ago Lufthansa had lost our luggage on the flight over to Milan (shock). We stayed at Villa Margherita the first couple of days of the vacation. While the four of us bought some clothes and hiked the trails of the Cinque Terre, our gracious hosts at the Villa Margherita worked the phones with the Lufthansa people. They were able to get our luggage to us before we left for Firenze. The location is great. Neat cemetary nearby. Short walk to the train station that hooks up ro all the Cinque terre towns. The rooms are nothing special, but for $85 they were fine. They have a nice garden to sip coffee. I got up early each morning and walked around Levanto, too. I enjoyed going to the local corner coffee shop (no, not Starbucks), and tried to converse in Italian with the locals who hung out each morning. I walked down to the beach and visited a local church and even a castle. It was such a nice experience that none of us were even upset that Lufthansa had lost our luggage. We thought, &quot;What the Hell, we're in Italy. What could be better than this?&quot;

Thanks all.