Cinque Terre train/taxi question
 

Although I've been to the CT region several times, this is a new transportation issue for us.

We need to catch a 7:06am train to Rome from La Spezia. Trenitalia shows that there is a 6:31am train from Monterosso that should get us to La Spezia with a few minutes to spare, but in my experience the trains running between the CT villages are very unpredictable.

Does anyone know the approximate fare for a taxi from Monterosso to La Spezia, how long the ride would be, and if it would be easy to arrange?

Many Thanks,
Jill

anyone?

Just trying one more time...

Although I never got an answer, I wanted to post what I was able to find out from my hotel in case anyone needs this information in the future.

A taxi from Monterosso to La Spezia is approximately 65€.

We are still undecided about taking our chances on the early train or hiring a taxi and playing it safe...

Hi TA

Maybe you should go to La Spezia the night before and stay close to the station. After dinner take the last train. That way you shoudn't be late at all.

Trenitalia wouldn't give me Monterosso but it did give Vernazza. There is a 8:31 an 8:40 and a 10:38PM train out of Vernazza which gets you into La Spezia about 20 minutes later.

We are in CT a few months ago and also experienced erratic train schedules. So I would say that 35 minutes is cutting it a bit close. However, we also connected through La Spezia to Rome on a later train. No problem, Plenty of time to spare. So unless you're making another connnection in Rome ,take a later train from CT. There are several each day.

We opted to make the trip by train a couple of weeks ago. Our train out of Monterosso was over an hour late, thus we missed our connection which would have taken us on to Lucca (through La Spezia), thus we missed our pick-up time for a rental and had to wait until siesta time was over, thus we lost about three hours overall from our day. Having said all that, we were not on a particularly tight schedule and apart from the irritation of forgetting about the 12:30-3:00 (approximately) time frame when many businesses are closed, it really didn't matter. We ended up at the out-of-the-way pick up point for the car at 12:30. I tried that old sit at a cafe and watch the people, but I was still disappointed to have lost that much time. The final snowball effect was that we ended up in Sienna at almost dark and had to try to find our hotel at dusk. All that said to say---you should probably make your decision based on how flexible you can be. The morning we waited for our late train, we happened to end up at the station (in a driving rain) with two other American couples. One couple said that particular train had been late almost every day they had tried to use it. The trains are fairly frequent and inexpensive. You would need to check Trenitalia for specific times and amounts, but my recollection is that a ticket was less than $10. PJK