BO/Lucerne or Annecy/Chamonix before Italy?

My daughter & I enjoyed visiting Chamonix and Annecy this June.
Annecy became our favorite city in France (thus far...)

Having said this, you need to figure out the logistics of traveling from Chamonix or Annecy to the CT... It will be a long day...

"Italy has been a bucket list item for me for years and I never have been there"

Having read your comment above, I'd suggest concentrating your time visiting Italy, and leaving France and/or Switzerland for another trip.

Have a wonderful trip!

I wouldn't try to make a quick trip to Switzerland just to see Lucerne. It's picturesque but not the main reason people go to Switzerland, so I'd prefer it as part of a longer Swiss itinerary.

Both the Annecy and Lauterbrunnen areas are beautiful, and I wouldn't try to choose between them on that basis. To me it's all about the logistics: Which fits better with the rest of your trip?

Both are probably going to be something over 8 hours from the Cinque Terre by train. (Renting a car and dropping it in a different country usually comes with a very high surcharge.) It may be a plus that the route from Lauterbrunnen can include the Bernina Express, so you get two different kinds of mountain experiences.

But what about getting to that first stop? I'm concerned because you specifically mentioned wanting those first few days to be a relaxing time, and there's nothing relaxing about stepping off an overnight flight and still being many hours away from your desired destination, where you'll only be able to spend 2 or 3 days before moving on.

You didn't mention an arrival airport, so I'm guessing you haven't bought your airline tickets yet and are not sure which airport(s) you'll use. You might have to choose between paying hundreds of dollars extra per person to fly into Geneva (very close to Annecy) vs. a cheaper but more distant airport such as Milan (5-1/2 hours away). Good fares to Zurich occasionally crop up from some origins, which could work for the Bernese Oberland, but your origin may not have such deals.

Ideally you'll fly back home from Rome. Check out fares on multi-city (open-jaw) trips flying into any airport reasonably close to Annecy, Murren, or the Cinque Terre. You may discover that there's simply only one rational option because all the others are so much more expensive. From my origin the cheap choice would usually be Milan or Munich, but for you it could be totally different, and Rome might be a costly choice for the return flight. You won't know until you check.

Once you figure out what seems to be the best flight arrangement, the question of where to spend the first few days of the trip may be quite a bit easier.

Thank you both for the input- looking at flight options is definitely a smart thing to do to maybe help narrow things down (we might have a good amount of options, since we're coming from NYC) and yes, we're doing open jaw, leaving from Rome (unless we switch the route and go south to north- maybe that would be better?). We do have some flexibility in terms of how many days we stay, but we're trying to keep the trip around 2.5 weeks.

As I said another option is cutting my 3 nights in Cinque Terre (it seems beautiful and I've always wanted to go, but I'm also hearing that it's starting to get overrated bc of how crowded it is), and adding a few days to this part of the trip-maybe that would be better.

Another option is staying in Northern Italy...maybe Val D'Aosta, somewhere the Dolomites, or the Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso before we do CT or Florence? Not sure if that would be easier bc it's in the same country- I just want a few days with stunning natural scenery (there are too many places on this earth to choose from lol!)

Thoughts?

Oh, NYC. That helps a lot, or doesn't if you're trying to narrow things down!

The Dolomites are lovely. I spent a week in the area in 2015, staying in the valley (Bressanone and Bolzano) for mobility via public transportation, but there's no reason not to actually stay up in the mountains. A major rail line between Germany/Austria and Italy runs along the valley, so access is pretty straightforward if not particularly fast (about 4 hours from Milan or Munich).

I didn't get to the Val d'Aosta. Of the mountain towns I saw, I thought Ortisei (Val Gardena) looked liveliest (and it has a small wood-carving museum), but there's more bus service up there than you might expect, plus all sorts of lifts, so there's no shortage of walking opportunities from very flat to more challenging. The aforementioned valley cities both have pretty historic districts, and the larger Bolzano has several good museums, including the one housing the Iceman. There's heavy Austrian influence in this area, so it would feel quite a bit different from your Italian destinations. If you wanted to rent a car for a couple of days you could work out a nice loop trip, I'm sure, but that would severely cut into your hiking/relaxing time, and it's certainly not necessary.

I have not been to the Gran Paraiso National Park (which I'm confident gets a lot fewer tourists than the Dolomites, if that matters to you), but an outdoorsy friend who visited it 20 or so years ago loved it. I'm not sure how good transportation is within the park, so that's something to check out before you commit unless you'd want to rent a car.

I was fortunate to visit Cinque Terre several times before the onslaught and haven't been back recently, so I have no words of wisdom about current conditions in that area. Certainly it is beautiful when not overrun, though the current closure of a major part of the lower coastal path is a disappointment. But others here have pointed out that there are other nice coastal towns in the area that aren't on the cruisers' radar. Take a look at a comprehensive guidebook to Italy and see whether you can come up with an option or two. I do think a short stay in a coastal town would be a nice inclusion in your itinerary since your time in Tuscany and Rome will not be particularly watery.

Summertime heat can be an issue in Italy (even in Bolzano/Bressanone, though not at altitude in the Dolomites), and unless I was trying to hit or avoid a special event, I'd be inclined to fly into Rome and out of a northern gateway. But with a trip starting in late June it probably matters very little; the weather will just be a matter of luck.