Florence to Cinque Terre
 

After reading some of your posts, I'm interested in going to Cinque Terre. We have a week in the Florence/Tuscany region.
Other than Florence, what do you recommend as must sees? Is Cinque Terre too far? We will have a car. We had planned to book two nights near Florence but prefer to stay somewhere else for the other five nights.

Hi there --

The CT is lovely and worth visiting if you feel you can fit it in. You can take a train from Florence and the trip will take approximately 2.5 - 3 hours each way. Because of this travel time, I would recommend staying overnight (2 nights would be even better).

That being said, there are plenty of great hilltowns to explore in Tuscany. So, you could easily spend the entire week in Florence and the Tuscan countryside... You could split your time between Florence and Siena or a smaller town. For ideas, try searching for Tuscany in the box above.

What time of year will you be going? Good luck! -- Heather.

CT is a fairly easy drive from Florence, we did it in under 3 hours. Levanto is the easiest town to drive into, and it's only a few minutes by train to Monterosso. I personally would do 5 nights in Tuscany - maybe splitting it up between the Florence area and the Sienna area, and then 2 nights in CT or Levanto. Northern Tuscany has a different look than Southern Tuscany, and there are sooo many interesting hilltowns, vinyards, etc, that 5 days might not even be enough. That being said, we enjoyed CT at least as much, but 2 nights there would probably be enough.

Hi, zootsi, we are planning a trip for July, the only time we can go. We are planning to drive from Florence to CT, our hotel is Vila Steno in Monterosso. I have printed the Viamichelin route maps. Do you think these are accurate or should I buy specific maps. We hope to drive on to Siena and Orvieto from CT. Was the route easy enough to follow to CT. Thanks for any info.

Just back from CT and had a great time! Very relaxing and romantic. We took the train from Florence as well. Stayed at Hotel Villa Steno in Monterosso...very nice, request a view.

Definatley hike some of the trails and eat a Gambero Rosso in Vernazza. One of the best meals the entire trip.