My husband and I are planning a business trip to Montpellier in late Oct. (2nd time) and need to arrive in Milan to use FF miles.
I need suggestions on where to go in Milan region (have been to Venice, Florence, Rome) for 4-5 days before going to Montpellier by train as well as answer to how long of a train ride this is?
Suggestions on hotels, must sees, etc. Love to wonder, markets, art, music, wine, etc. We will not have a car so need to travel out of Milan region by train/bus. Any thoughts or tips are greatly appreciated!

From Milan you can take the train to Lake Como, several popular towns there - Como, Varenna, Menaggio, Bellagio. There is a lot to do there and it is so beautiful. I use the German rail site for planning and it looks like a 11 - 12 hour trip from Milano to Montpellier. One left at 23:35 and arrives at 10:55. It looks like a sleeper car from Milan to Dijon and then switch trains at 5:39. You can use this site for the Italian trips also but Trenitalia might be better. Here's the URL:
http://www.reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

Agree on all counts with cls2paris-expect hotels will still be open in Lake Como but you might check ahead. Lake Maggiore also looks great (we haven't been).

In Milan, Duomo is awesome and you can take elevator to roof. If you are interested in opera, La Scala has tour. When we went, one had to get reservation for "Last Supper" but we felt is was a "must". The shopping galleria (sorry, can't think of the name) is fun. We just had a day trip to Milan and thought it looked like an interesting city in which to walk. If you get a chance, do a word search on Milan-this has come up before. BTW, what do you suggest in Montpellier-we plan to use it as a base for next trip. I'll post this as a sep. thread.

Thanks cls2paris and donco for all of the tips!
I have been looking at Varenna and it looks good. Would you suggest any stay over in Milan? I'll check out the train schedule.
donco, regarding Montpellier, what do you want to know? I'll try to help.

Lake Maggiore is lovely and slightly nearer to Milan than Como with easy access by train once you get into Milan. Stay in Stresa. There are some lovely hotels and now the motorway has been built behind the traffice has reduced considerably. You can see soome lovely islands with gardens and villas/palaces by ferry. Very easy to use.
If you don't want to stay there you could break the journey and go down to the French or Italian riviera. Personally I like to stay in Menton it is a super little town with good, shopping and restaurants, but San Remo is lovely too. If you are down that way on a Friday you must catch the train to Ventimiglia market - excellent for handbags, belts, scarves, gloves and clothing (a slightly smaller version is in San Remon on Saturdays).

Thanks, floridamom, I made a new post about Montpellier-hope you can locate it. Back to your post, we saw the things in Milan I mentioned in one full day. Another possibility is to work your way to France as JennyK suggested. We are going Barcelona, Montpellier, Nice, Paris. Rest up in Milan one day, take half the train trip to Riviera, then end up in Montpellier.

Sorry floridamom, the thread is entitled "Montpellier goodies?". Made it a new thread so as not to "dilute" yours. Thanks again for your input.