Originally Posted by
sophiesophie
My two cents:
the train from Nice to Ventimigilia to Genoa to the south (I was only as far south as Pisa near the coast) - it is not scenic enough to waste the whole day getting there. You will have to change trains along the way and could likely miss one and then have to wait an hour or so for the next. Fly to Rome, travel by train for visits to nearby towns.
Well said. Local trains in Italy are not designed for long distance trips or scenery. You may get a scenic spot here and there, and that's it. No, I haven't done the specific Nice to Rome trip on a local train because with years of traveling around Italy on trains from local to high speed, it would never occur to me to subject myself to that. If the OP is interested in seeing Italian coastal scenery, as you said, wasting a day on a local train is a great way to squander one day of doing so.