Hotel Eur in Lido di Camaiore is a great place to stay and only a boat ride away- one of the few (affordable) hotels in the area with a pool! The boats leave daily from the pier on the beach and hop between the Cinque Terre villages, which, in themselves are very pretty, but overrun with tourists. We have stayed at the hotel on 3 separate vacations and there are fantastic sandy beaches and an incredible array of reasonably priced to very expensive restaurants there. They have free to use bicycles...
Viareggio is less than 10 minutes away by bike and has some superyacht builders in the harbour. Pisa / Florence / Lucca are all on the train line, too.