Hello, this summer my girlfriend and I will be visiting France and Italy for about two weeks, though we will be in the latter for about 5 days. We are meeting friends in Venice and renting a car and hoped to see Cinque Terre and a bit of Tuscany before heading to Rome. I'll acknowledge up front that this is a tight schedule and in a perfect world we'd love to spend multiple days and see many more things, but that is going to have wait until next time. My question is what is the best strategy to see Cinque Terre and some parts of Tuscany in about two full days. Here's the only definite plans so far:

- Leave Venice by car the morning of July 1st and head southwest;
- Get into Rome the afternoon/evening of July 3rd.

The issue is where to stay and how to tackle the in-between. One thought I had was to stay somewhere within day-trip distance of cinque terre, say Lucca, and make a day trip of it on the 2nd. That way we get the part of the first day/evenings in the country and can still hit cinque terre. Are there better towns/areas/accommodations to consider? One thing to note is we'd prefer to stay in a secluded B&B/Villa than a busy-ish downtown.

Another option thrown around is to stay around Porto Venere and cover Tuscany on the way down to Rome.

Any other thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks!