I've been to Italy with my wife several times.

We've been to Venice, Como, Florence, Rome and Sorrento/Positano/Capri at least once each.

I'm in the preliminary stages of planning another trip to Italy (about 10 days) for next June that will focus on smaller towns using Florence as a main base.

Presently on my list are Lucca/Pisa, Siena, Arezzo/Cortona, Orvieto, Fiesole among others.

I'm thinking of moving our base from Florence to somewhere near Cinque Terre for a couple of days in mid-trip to visit these towns and Portofino.

Efficiency-wise it seems to make the most sense to visit Lucca/Pisa and then go on to Cinque Terre later in the day.

However, that would entail having our luggage with us all day. Since we'll be traveling by train, is there some place in either Pisa or Lucca where we can check our luggage?

Any other suggestions?

According to the Trenitalia site, there is luggage storage at Pisa Centrale but not at Lucca.

You could take the train to Pisa Centrale, store your luggage, catch the local bus out front to the tower (short ride about 1€), visit the tower area, walk from the tower to Pisa S Rossore train station (closer than Centrale and closer to Lucca), catch the train to Lucca (20 minutes), tour Lucca, train back to Pisa Centrale (30 minutes) to retrieve luggage, etc.

Trenitalia only lists luggage storage for the main train stations, but I assume it would be the same for Pisa.
Charges
4,00 € the first 5 hours
0,60 € /hour from 6th to 12th hour
0,20 € /hour from 13th hour on

Hi Myer,

Haven't seen you here for a long time!

Yes, you can check your luggage at the Pisa station. We trained from Orvieto to SML, and had a change of trains in Pisa. Since we had the choice of taking the one leaving right away or waiting for the next one 3 hours later, we decided to stop and see the tower and duomo.

We checked our bags and walked. As I remember, it took us about 25 minutes and we weren't hurrying. There were no taxis to be had and we didn't see any buses, but I guess there were some somewhere!

Back then the tower was closed, but we really enjoyed taking a tour of the duomo. Very beautiful!

Orvieto is pretty far south to visit from Florence. Are you flying into Florence or Pisa? If you were coming into/out of Rome, I'd recommend visiting the town enroute to Florence.

Yes, CT takes long enough to get to that you should move your base. We just loved SML. From there we took the boat over to Portofino early one morning and had a long lunch, heavy on the wine. We also hiked 4 out of 5 villages another day. SML itself is a wonderful town. We stayed 3 nts and would have loved a 4th.

Hi Dayle,

We're just looking at the possibilities of doing this next June.

My wife isn't into the hiking trips I been on the past couple of years so I've been doing both types. I'm also looking at YNP & GTNP

We haven't been to Europe in about 3 years so we think it might be a good idea. The last trip was Prague, Budapest, Brugges & Amsterdam.

Is the luggage check in Pisa a locker type thing where you have to squeeze things in or is it a real luggage check?

I assume it's a luggage room. Not many places have lockers anymore.