Northwest Tuscany
 

We are looking for a small town or village to stay in between Pisa and Cinque Terre for two nights in May. We will have a car for this portion of the trip and the plan is to drive from wherever we spend the night in Chianti (Greve?), stop in Pisa for a few hours and then drive on to our destination for the night. The next day we will take a day trip to Cinque Terre and return before heading to Florence the following day.

Viareggio looks too big and Forte dei Marmi looks too expensive. I considered Lucca but it doesn't appear that we can drive into town and park where we stay, plus it's a little far from Cinque Terre. We would consider any small town, farm, B&B etc. More interested in relaxing and character for this part of the trip. Closer to Cinque Terre is preferred to shorten the round trip drive time.

Thanks

Lucca is a very nice town. We arrived without a resevation and a festival was taking place. We couldn't find a hotel and wished we had reserved in advance. We roamed around for a few hours and would have loved to stay longer.

Sorry...I guess I should have read your post more carefully. I will say that there are car parks on the outskirts of Lucca and the town is as cute as a button. We ended up in La Spezia for one night since we couldn't get a room in Lucca. We were based for the next few nights in Vernazza and Le Spezia paled in comparison in retrospect. It was ok but nothing special compare to the CT.

I would love to stay in any of the CT towns but it didn't look like we could drive into any of them and park.

There are really 7 villages and you can drive to 5 of them.
I prefer staying in Portovenere or Levanto---the other 2---but Monterosso has good parking as well.

When doing research for a villa for a family reunion I stumbled on Licciana Nardi near Tavenelle. It's 100 km from Pisa.

I've not been there, but the photos, location and reviews all look good to me:
http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p434055

I believe they rent small apartments within the villa.

Can anyone recommend a place to stay in one of the Cinque Terre towns that we can drive to. I don't want to lug suitcases from a distant parking lot or the train station.

We have just this last weekend booked in Riomaggiore having unexpectedly found ourselves with three nights free after a week in Tuscany. My reading of it is that there is parking but not within the village.
At the moment we are trying to decide whether to keep the car and so drive and park there, or take it back to the airport when we leave the villa and travel to Riomaggiore and back by train.
With one full day and two half days we are likely to spand all our time in the Cinque Terra walking.

Look at hotels in Monterosso in the new town and near the beach area---there are perhaps 6 hotels in that area in different price ranges---the big parking lot is there.