Best tours and Day Trips from Cinque Terre

For better or worse, the best things to do in Cinque Terre are activities that can be completed in a period ranging from 48 to 72 hours. At the same time, there is the fact that many people plan to stay in this national park for longer. In that scenario tours and excursions end up being an ideal resource for tourists to leave from this site in order to get to know other corners of this part of northern Italy.

So I advise you to keep reading this post, as I have been in charge of researching aspects such as prices, durations and destinations of these excursions. All with the intention that you can choose the one that best fits your budget and your expectations.

The first thing you need to know to understand how are the best excursions from Cinque Terre is that most of these tours are usually relatively short and are focused on touring villages near this national park. However, they may also be aimed at other larger towns that are also located within this part of northern Italy.

For that reason Portovenere, La Spezia, Genoa, Lucca and Pisa are usually some of the favorite destinations when participating in a tour from Cinque Terre. Some of these excursions tend to be private, focusing on family groups of six or eight people. Others are geared towards groups of up to 25 participants on the same trip.

As for the convenience of these types of excursions, you should know that they are among the best things to do in Cinque Terre in winter. Especially because if you will spend a whole week in this national park then allocating a day to one of these excursions can be advisable in a season full of cold and rain that limits the enjoyment of the sea and the beaches. Even more knowing that the entertainment offer in the area drops a lot when it is summer.

Anyway, you also have to know that the plan can be considered one of the best things to do in Cinque Terre in summer, at least if you want to get away from the tourist influx of the national park. This is because when you head to other places that are a little bigger you will notice that they are cities where you will feel a little less the masses of tourists that characterize this time of the year.

Fortunately, nowadays you have the possibility to book an excursion with these characteristics in an infinite number of ways. Of all of them the most convenient is an online booking of the service and this is due to the simple fact that through this method of purchase you can find out very important details that guarantee the success of the experience.

Some of them may be the possibility of knowing the opinions of other people who have already made this particular excursion or the possibility of canceling the purchase of the service for free if you do it well in advance. Being able to book these excursions for a date and time in high demand with enough months in advance is also something very favorable.

This avoids the complicated situation of having to arrive at the national park only to find that it is full of tourists and that getting places for the excursions you are interested in will be impossible. In fact, other tourist services that are developed in this national park are usually booked through an online purchase and among them are the best gastronomic tours of Cinque Terre.

The alternative of buying an excursion to the destination of your choice directly from a tourist agency in that locality and that is leaving from the town of your accommodation in Cinque Terre is something that you also have at your disposal. The big problem is that there are no guarantees as to the amount of money you will get, let alone that there will be availability by the time you arrive.

It is difficult to calculate the exact duration of the excursions from Cinque Terre. There are some that are meant for a couple of hours while others may take up half of your day and specifically the most productive hours of your day. Either way, most of these tours are usually about 5 hours in total. At least those departing from La Spezia, the administrative area of Cinque Terre.

However, when it is an excursion that focuses on taking participants to the main attractions of a large city and even includes a stop for lunch, it is possible for the experience to extend up to 7 hours in total. Especially if it involves cities such as Genoa, Pisa or Florence.

So it can be said that this type of excursion becomes part of the best things to do in Cinque Terre during a 3 day trip. This knowing that they can be developed between mid-morning and afternoon while the evening will still be available to explore the gastronomic and entertainment attractions that this national park offers to its visitors.

Actually, an excursion of 5 hours or less that takes you to La Spezia or Portovenere is also part of the best things to do in Cinque Terre during a two-day trip. Especially if it is a visit during the tourist off-season, as many restaurants and stores will be inoperative during your entire visit.

The things you might see on this type of excursion are adjusted according to the destination you choose. For example, if you decide to visit the other two places of interest near Cinque Terre, La Spezia or Portovenere, you will see a similar panorama to this national park. In the case of the first site, it is a modern and small city with a central train station and a cruise terminal that receives hundreds of thousands of tourists annually who head to this national park.

With Portovenere you have to know that it is a coastal town that is at the western end of the bay of La Spezia and is basically a city with an architecture very similar to that of the five towns of the national park. Although in this case the beach is much more extensive and the buildings a little more modern.

When the trip goes to Pisa, Florence or Genoa the panorama changes completely, because the truth is that in that case we are talking about going from small towns located on cliffs to cities with hundreds of years of history, with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and that are categorized as one of the most important tourist destinations in Europe.

Each of them stands out on its own merit, as Genoa is an important center for world trade, Pisa is a reference of the history of the Italian Renaissance and Florence is one of the most important towns in Western history. Likewise, both excursions to nearby cities and those that go a little further away from this national park end before sunset. Therefore, they are often ideal as a plan before joining the best activities to do at night in Cinque Terre.

Enjoying an excursion departing from any of the towns in Cinque Terre is not complicated by the simple fact that most of the tourist destinations in this part of Italy are interesting places that will keep you entertained in a myriad of different ways. However, there are a few recommendations that I can make to make the whole dynamic much more organized and at the same time enjoyable.

The first of these tips would be to choose the time of the excursion according to the amount of time you have available in Cinque Terre. This is because if you are staying for a full week it makes no difference if you dedicate a whole day to leave the area, while if you are only staying for 72 hours you have to decide if it is a morning or afternoon excursion so that day you can do activities that can complement your exploration of this region.

The next recommendation I can make is that you try to avoid consuming too much in lunch on your own in this type of tours. The reality is that you can spend that money more wisely on a more elevated dining experience in a restaurant in your Cinque Terre village.

Finally, the best advice I can give you is to enjoy the tour without regrets. For anyway an excursion that allows you to explore other tourist destinations near this national park is part of the best things to do in Cinque Terre in December. This knowing that it is low season and that the weather is also not conducive to exploring the coast.

The exact price of an excursion from Cinque Terre is somewhat just as subjective as its duration, as it depends directly on the destination chosen. For example, a shared tour that includes the accompaniment of a guide specialized in the history of Portovenere usually costs about 170 euros per person. That's not including drinks and meals for the whole experience.

At the same time there is the fact that you may be able to find some excursion departing from this national park to Florence or Pisa for a very similar price. There may even be a tasting of appetizers that cannot be categorized as lunch, let alone dinner.

Similarly, you should know that the decisive factors that affect the price of this type of excursion are the number of participants included in the experience, the type of vehicle chosen for the transfer and the language in which the guide speaks. A Spanish-speaking guide is usually more expensive than one who offers his services in English, knowing that this language is much more universal and therefore people of different nationalities can participate without problems in the experience.

If the prices of these excursions are a drawback for you, you should know that they are part of the best things to do in Cinque Terre in October and that at that time of the year prices drop in this national park as well as in other Italian cities. All because it is the end of the high summer season that allows the low demand to make tourist services more economical.

There are really no towns that you cannot miss on an excursion from Cinque Terre for the simple fact that this kind of tours are oriented to different places and each of them are interesting on their own merit.

One of these places is the central train station of La Spezia. You will inevitably need to pass through this place if the means of transport you have chosen to reach other more distant cities such as Bologna, Pisa or Florence is the Italian train system.

In fact, it is possible that within the itinerary of these excursions you will have to take a short train ride from the town where you are staying in Cinque Terre to the city of La Spezia. From there you will take a private bus that would be reserved for you and all the other people who are included in the excursion.

Exactly for these reasons an excursion is never a recommended plan for those who will have a single day trip to Cinque Terre, because a good part of this activity is dedicated to the transfer from this national park to the destination to visit and also to the return trip.

Participating in a guided tour will always be a more recommendable experience than traveling on your own for the simple fact that you will be accompanied by a specialist in the history of the place you will visit.

And in a country like Italy this is synonymous with enjoyment, because these are towns or cities in which every corner has interesting information, which you would be missing if you have to walk on your own following a GPS address to try to reach sites that you will not get to know in its full splendor.

The issue of logistics organization is also another great benefit of guided tours from Cinque Terre, as this national park is somewhat isolated from the rest of the country despite being connected through its train system. So hiring a service that will plan your departure from a bus or train to coincide with museum, restaurant and monument schedules is a great advantage. Especially when you are trying to focus on enjoying the experience.

Finally, there is also the issue that these experiences can save you money, as what you will spend on independently purchased tickets and what you would have to pay to have a guide at each of the sites you will visit at your excursion destination are quite similar to what these trips planned by a tour company usually cost.