Leaving Cinque Terre
 

Well, I've been to the Trenitalia site and the Bahn-something site and still can't figure out how I can get from Cinque Terre to Nice, France. I must be looking in the wrong places. Can anyone tell me where to look and whether this is a long, expensive train ride? We are only trying to get far enough into France to rent a car for the second leg of our journey. Thanks in advance!

Something about your question doesn't make sense to me. How are you getting to the Cinque Terre in the first place? by car? or by train? to which station? Isn't as simple as going from that same station onward to Genoa, and then to Nice?<BR><BR>If you are traveling by car, then San Remo is a fairly convenient place to drop your car, then take the train onward to Ventimiglia/Nice. Hertz and Avis are MUCH more conveniently located for the train station in San Remo than Budget/Maggiore - - for what it's worth.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

Thanks, Rex, sorry I wasn't very clear. We will be arriving in Cinque Terre (don't know which town yet) by train, and leaving for France by train. I was advised to travel by train in Italy (because they are so cheap) and to rent a car in France in order to avoid extra charges for drop-off in a different country. At this point I am trying to find out if it is going to take a whole day just to travel to Nice and whether it would be very expensive. As you can probably tell, we are only at the very beginning of our planning. Didn't even know the train had to go to Genoa first...thanks again.

You're very welcome, Ellen. I have actually never been to the Cinque Terre, even though I have driven by that stretch of the Italian coast a number of times, coming or going.<BR><BR>So I don't know which station will be the most convenient for where you are staying there. And you should not need to connect in Genoa on the inbound (assuming you are coming from somewhere in Tuscany, for example). I only meant that on your way from CT to France.<BR><BR>For more info - - and some interesting reading, take a look at http://www.epinions.com/trvl-review-...38D7AF52-prod1 and/or http://www.travelintelligence.net/ws...s/art_620.html - - sounds like you want La Spezia or Levanto. Where are you planning to stay?<BR><BR>I just looked real quick at La Spezia to Genoa on trenitalia, and there are two rapid service trains at 10:39 (arr 11:40) and at 11:57 (arr 13:09), so I do not think this will eat up an entire day. It's about 2 hours further from Genoa to Nice.<BR>

At the Trenitalia web site, put in Monterosso for your departure station and Nice for your arrival station. Monterosso is one of the cities of CT. The others with train service are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza. Be sure to get the spellings right, or the Trenitalia site will reject it.<BR><BR>We just returned from 4 nights in CT (stayed in Monterosso) and found it breathtakingly beautiful. Of course, weather makes all the difference. We had 4 sunny, rainless days.

topping<BR>

We are taking the same train trip from Cinque Terre to Nice in three weeks. The trip takes between 6 and 7 hours and the cost is about $36/lst class. You can catch the train in any of the Cinque Terre towns, change trains in Genova, again in Savona, again in Ventimiglia.