i am planning a surprise trip for my husband and need some advice
i want to go to Lake Como and Cinque Terre. we will be flying in from barcelona to milan and we have about 10 days to do this. we need to be back in Paris on the 13th to catch a flight home.
should we visit Cinque Terre first and than Lake Como or reverse that order? i guess i'm asking advice on which direction would be the best to take.
it looks like the train travel between Milan and Cinque Terre will be about 5 hours.
can you share your expertise with me in terms of my dilemma?
thank you
helaine

When will this happen? Your enjoyment will depend largely on the season.

Elsewhere on this board just now there is a discussion about the merits or otherwise of visiting the Cinque Terre villages, which - due to overcrowding - is not always a fun experience. Take a look at this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7fa-7uR1hc

If your trip is in the daylight-saving season, it doesn't really matter where you go first, the two places are in opposite directions from Milan. Lake Como comes to life around April when the seasonal businesses re-open.

Can you fly into Genoa instead, and take the coastal train that gets you to the Cinque Terre that way? Then go to Lake Como via Milan. Look at a map and see what I mean.

The Cinque Terre has been pretty much destroyed by tourism. I would fly to Genoa and take a taxi to Santa Margherita Ligure [about €70], or a taxi to town [Genova Piazza Principe] and a train. You can look up ferry services. The best train from there to Lake Como [Varenna-Esino] takes 3:45. Then fly out of MXP.

The crowds in the Cinque Terre are predominantly day trippers, and they don't often venture into the hills above the towns. If you stay a few nights, you can enjoy the towns in the early morning and evening, and spend the daytime hiking the higher trails. However, you need good walking shoes for those trails. Most of the lower trails are closed. Two of them have been closed for over five years, because of the risk of landslides.

I just noticed yesterday that a third trail has been closed recently; I don't know if that's temporary or not. The only lower trail open at the moment is between Vernazza and Corniglia. The Corniglia end is rather steep, so if that would bother you, and if the high trails don't interest you, you might want to stay in Vernazza.

The Cinque Terre gets going in March, so if you're going in the spring, it might be better to go there first. In high season, Lake Como is also very crowded. We were there in May, and we hardly saw any Italians there, other than people who worked in the restaurants, and even most of them were foreigners. At a bar in Bellagio, we were even asked by a young American waitress if we could please speak English! Lake Como has the advantage, though, of a lot more space than the tiny Cinque Terre towns, so the tourists are more spread out.

Train journey times:
Milan Malpensa airport - Monterosso/5Terre: 4 1/2 hrs
Milan Malpensa airport - Varenna/Lake Como: 2 1/4 hrs
Milan Malpensa airport - Stresa/Lake Maggiore: 1 hr (by bus)
Milan Malpensa airport - Lugano/Lake Lugano: 1 1/2 hrs (by bus)
Monterosso/5Terre - Varenna: 4 1/2 hrs

Vueling flies from BCN to Genoa and Pisa (not daily). Both airports ae much closer to Monterosso/5Terre than Milan.
The overnight ferry ride from Barcelona to Genoa ar Vado Ligure (Savona) would most probably be more relaxing too.

The overnight ferry may be relaxing, but it takes most of the next day as well as overnight.

It doesn't take six hours to go from le Cinque Terre to Milan.

Were it me, I would go to Lago di Como first, and then to le Cinque Terre. You can either fly from Pisa to Paris, or you can take a train from le Cinque Terre to Turin, and from there you can catch a train to Paris. THAT train takes 6 hours, so I suggest you spend a night in Turin, which ia great town for dinner and cocktails.

Listen, I love Italians to pieces, but I wouldn't stop myself from going somewhere I wanted to see in Italy because I wouldn't see many Italians there. I went to Lago di Como and it was pretty obvious to me that it has been a tourist destination long before the invention of the airplane. Maybe in the past the tourists filling up those big old hotels were Germans or French or British or just other Italians, but people have been going there for more than a century just because it is so beautiful, and that's it. They look at the lake and they look at each other. It's a big honeymoon-anniversary place, and you are taking your husband. If you go on the boats around the lake, there are not many people other than in Bellagio.

Since you plan to spend nights in le Cinque Terre, you will experience it when it is not crowded. During the day, if you think it is too crowded, you can take a train ride up or down the coast. Sestri Levante is very nice for having a lunch and a swim. Or there is a teeny cute town called Bonassola. Zoagli is very beautiful, but it is a longer train ride.

When we were on Lake Como in May, Varenna was also very crowded, and, again, almost 100% of the visitors were English speakers, with a smattering of Germans and a few French. The average age of visitors was well above the honeymoon age, but May is possibly not a big honeymoon month.

I don't know about other people's expectations, but if I go to a foreign country and find that nearly 100% of the other tourists are Italian, I kind of get the feeling that I might as well have stayed home. It also affects the shops and the restaurants. In fact, we found the food there to be overpriced and mediocre.

I don't know why you went to Lago di Como if it wasn't to see the lake. If you are gong to eat or hang out with other Italians -- didn't you say you live in Italy? -- there are so many better places to go. It would never occur to me to spend my time on Lago di Como counting what other languages I heard.

Have you got something against older people? I mentioned anniversaries, and when I was in Lago di Como, it was rather charming how many older couples I saw -- inlcluding Italians -- who appeared to be celebrating anniversaries.

I am thinking of going to Bodensee (Lake Constance), and it never occurred to me to wonder how many Germans I would see. (Or Austrians or Swiss, depending on where exactly I go on the lake). I went to Piz Gloria, and Murren, and I didn't even think about how many Swiss I would see. In fact, I think I probably saw more Chinese people. I didn't care.

If I met someone from Italy at the Grand Canyon who complained to me that he or she had run into too many Italians, and that the food was mediocre and overpriced, I'm not sure what my response would be. Like, what did you expect? Or: Have you traveled before?

Places of tremendous natural beauty -- Santorini, Capri, Carmel -- I'm sure you know the list -- what do you expect? Are you sorry you saw them?

All these places people ask about, if the crowds bother them then there is always someplace around the corner or up the hill to get a breather. Most of these crowds are daytrippers, so at night it is different. You are right to warn people who might be crowd-phobic that there are crowds in famous tourist places in case they have only seen those incredible pictures taken at dawn with not a soul in sight. But I'm not sure you are the measure of all things for everybody. You live in Italy and you go to touristy places and complaing you don't see enough Italians. Not everybody, needless to say, is going to have your reactions.

My wife and I stayed in Santa Margherita Ligure and had a lovely walk to the beautiful city of Portofino. The next day we took a 45 minute train ride to Monterosso (Cinque Terre) and made the walk between all 5 cities. We had drinks to celebrate, then we jumped back on the train to SML. SML is an absolutely beautiful city, one that I could live in if I ever move to Italy. The walk to Portofino is quite beautiful as is Portofino. I would do that, rather than stay in CT.

I guess there is a way you can "tell" an Italian when you see one. I gather if they are complaining about not having stayed home that's one way.

<i> Have you got something against older people? </i>

As a matter of fact, I'm pretty old myself.

Well, I am feeling less crabby about these posts, but honestly: when I went to Lago di Como, of course Bellagio was filled with tourists mid-day, but when I went to Varenna, I walked a half hour or so up in the hills to get a better view of the lake, and it was mesmerizing. Just stunning. I never wanted to leave. Truly, Lago di Como is a breathtakingly beautiful place, one of the most enchanting in the world. I am surprised in all these posts no one even says that, just "oh, I couldn't stand the other people or the lunch I had."

I am not a "hiker", but I often do huff and puff my way up into the hills to see a vista. There is a path that goes up into the hillsides of Varenna that is just gorgeous. I can't remember how many other people might have been up there. But I didn't go very far and it was certainly not swarmed with tourists, like the lakeside could be.

I am wondering if some of the bad experiences related here are about people visiting towns, and not finding anywhere to sit in cafes, and maybe it is too hot to get enthusiastic about doing some hill climbing? If all you see of le Cinque Terre is the towns, or if all you see of Lago di Como is the towns, yes they are packed (with older people who want to sit.) But if you go up to where the views are, it is quiet. Honeymoon territory.

I have visited Santa Margherita and Portofino and I remember them as flat. I also remember it had a many cruise shippers there, and expensive shops, to I'm not sure I would want to live there. But I think the same holds for le Cinque Terre. I walked up the hill in one of the towns. I didn't even go "hiking". It was annoying to be at the seaside cafes (and hot from the sun, actually), so I just walked up the hill. After about 20 minutes, I was alone with a couple of ducks by a mill and two old Italian ladies who were sitting on a stoop outside a church. I didn't hike, but I could see why people are charmed by the villages.

As for being able to tell Italians from foreign tourists, it is of course possible that this older couple in Bellagio was some other branch of European (definitely not Americans), but I don't think so. The way they were dressed, their height, their coloring, their interaction -- I can still see them. In fact, now that you mention it, I'm not sure who other than an Italian women would be wearing a nice fine-gauge sweater with a brooch on a hot September afternoon, and a wool skirt over her support-hose covered knees. I'll admit I have no way of knowing if they had spent their honeymoon in Lago di Como long ago, and now were back to celebrate their 40th anniversary, but that was my thought. I saw lots of other people that day, but that's who I remembered. But obviously other people go on different days and remember other things.