I have been tweaking our plans and would love some feedback on July 2016 trip. Flying in and out of Milan seems to be our best option on Emirates due to price. Since that means getting back down to Milan, I thought Venice last would be a good option. I know its almost 6 hours by train, so wondering if there is a nice town on the way to stop and break up the trip. Would be open to flying but didn't find anything that was inexpensive. I am open to any suggestions since this is our first time to these areas. Thanks in advance!

Day 1 Overnight flight to Milan

Day 2 Train Milan to Verona for 3 nights (Train travel 1 hour)

Day 3 Stay in Verona

Day 4 Stay in Verona

Day 5 Verona to Trento for 2 nights (train travel about an hour)
**or should we stay in Lake Garda??

Day 6 Stay in Trento
Day 7 Trento to Innsbruck to 3 nights (Train travel about 2.5 hours)

Day 8 Stay in Innsbruck

Day 9 Stay in Innsbruck

Day 10 Innsbruck to Salzburg for 3 nights (Train travel about 2 hours)
Day 11 Stay in Salzburg

Day 12 Stay in Salzburg

Day 13 Salzburg to Venice for 3 nights

**or somewhere to stop for a night to break up travel?????

Day 14 Stay in Venice

Day 15 Stay in Venice

Day 16 Train Venice to Milan 2.5 Hour

4:10PM Flight - Arrive 7:00 PM

Well I would cut Innsbruck back to 1 day and add the time to Salzburg, which has much more to see and do. Innsbruck is a cute town but not very bg and you won't need to time unless you are going to the mountains for skiing.

Without a car you would have a hard time seeing the best scenery on Lago di Garda, and your only options by train to visit the lake would involve backtracking toward Milan.

Trento is a very enjoyable town, but you might give some consideration to staying on the train from Verona another half hour and staying in Bolzano. From Bolzano it is much easier to take a public-transportation excursion to some spectacular Dolomiti scenery. If you are unlucky and get rain, you can always "day trip" back to Trento from Bolzano to see the wonderful castle and the main piazza.

If you want to break up the trip from Salzburg to Venice then Udine is a quite attractive town with a well-deserved reputation for good food and wine. If you enjoy Italian culture, well-preserved and independent-minded Udine has a lot of history and character and is almost completely unaffected by tourism, and it might make a nice break from the foreign crowds in Salzburg and Venice.

I'm a bit neurotic about being close to my departure airport when coming home so would consider a last night in Milan, Bergamo, somewhere on the train line towards Arona or similar. I have not experienced problems very often with trains in Italy but it's a long way from Venice to Milan if there is a problem. I would consider travelling from Malpensa to Verona on arrival in Italy (about 2.5hrs) and visiting Milan on your homeward journey.

To break the journey between Salzburg and Venice, I've read that Klagenfurt is nice but have yet to visit there. You could investigate.

It's a long train ride from Salzburg to Venice; I did it once. However, the scenery was so wonderful I didn't mind the duration at all.

Bergamo upper town

I had this alos posted on another forum and got some feedback there as well. Thnak you all for teh suggestions.

While Salzburg is not a must see on this trip, we did want to see Hallstatt. It's always been somewhere we wanted to visit. So let me ask you all this, is it better if we drop Salzburg ? Fly into Milan, go Verona (3), Venice (3), then get a car and drive up to Hallstatt(2) then over to Innsbruck(3). That leaves us with 3 nights to fill in..not sure where. My husband is open to driving. Thoughts? Maybe having a car is the best best.

Another another option is if we end in Munich we can fly EasyJet for $61 Euro from Munich to Milan. The flight is at 6:10PM so we would have to fly in the night before which then leaves us in Milan with a 4PM flight. We were in Milan this past April, but I am sure we can find somethign to kill a few hours before heafing to the airport. That would give is Verona (3), Venice (3), Innsbruck (2), Salzburg (2 or 2), Munich (2 or 3) and Milan (1).

@nytraveler thanks for the suggestion about Innsbruck. It's one of those cute towns that I always wanted to visit. So cut it back to an overnight?

@dreamon Klagenfurt is very pretty and that would be a nice stop to break up the trip.