thanks for everyone's input! I think we'll just look for flights and figure out what our intentions are with each city/stop on planning our destination to fly into and out of. Seems like most people are for the fly into Venice and out of Rome though. Thanks!

We paid about $997 per ticket. Flew out of san francisco, connection at CDG and then on to Venice. A month later we flew out of Rome, connection in Atlanta and then to San Francisco.

thanks for the insight on the price you paid for your ticket! i plan on just keeping our eyes out for awhile to see what we can find.