From Paris to Venice and back again

Generally, you save time and perhaps money by flying into one city and home from a different city, so why retrace your steps to Paris for departure? Many airline and other travel sites offer multi-city or multi-destination itinerary functions. You can test a route where you fly home from Nice or Marseille in southern France.
Getting to southern France from Italy is more time-consuming that you might guess when you look at the map. As an alternative, I suggest flying into Rome or Florence, then seeing other northern Italian destinations. Skip the Riviera on this trip. You can easily get a no-frills flight to Paris, if you want to visit for a few days, then fly home from there. This route will allow you to catch mid-day flights from Paris for a comfortable trip home.

Your plan to fly from Paris to Venice is OK. It looks like you explored the alternative of flying into Venice and flying out of Paris. Just note your train travel time between Venice and the CT (about 6.0hrs) and your train time from the CT to Nice or Southern France (6.0hrs). It will be close to another 6.0hrs to get from Nice to Paris on the fastest train.

Does the 14/15 days also include travel days from/to the US? If so, you will be spending a large chunk of your time in transit. Each of the location changes you are proposing will take the majority of an entire day when you figure in transport to airport/train station, travel time and then transport time to new hotel, etc.
I think you would be better off concentrating on one country - either France or Italy - both can offer similar experiences (sea, countryside, romantic cities) and would minimize your time spent in transit.

Congratulations on your engagement and upcoming wedding!

For a better balance between travel time and sightseeing time I suggest that you skip the CT. Get your beach time on the French Riviera. Get your taste of village life in western Provence. Fly from Venice to Nice on easyJet. There is no service on some days so plan accordingly.

As mentioned above use open jaws for your flights to and from the US, either into Paris and out of Venice or vice versa. I agree that five nights in Paris is a great idea, but not split like you arranged them. As an alternative I would suggest that you start in Paris, then take the TGV to Avignon where you can rent a car (at the new TGV station) for the south of France portion of your journey. If you want to see Avignon for the day take the taxi into town and back and pick up your car that afternoon. We stayed a week in St. Remy and explored daily by car. You can do a few days there and then drive to Nice, taking in the coast on the way. From Nice take the train to Monterosso in the CT. You can enjoy the downtime on the train to catch up on reading, writing and sleeping while seeing some beautiful scenery. Assuming you are visiting the CT for hiking (you'll get plenty of beaches in the French Riviera), three days there is plenty. If you have not been to Florence you should stop there for a couple of days before finishing up in Venice. It is about 2 1/2 hours by train from the CT to Florence with one train change. Good luck.

Thanks for your responses!

We've decided we don't need to do the South of France, (OK, I'm the one who actually just threw that in there, thinking somehow that it made sense, but we hadn't really discussed it; ha) however we really do want to hit Paris, Venice (his must) and the CT (my must, and yes Jim, we totally are visiting for the hiking!).

We're going to keep looking into flight options and at open jaw flights again (Southam - we'd save time, but cost is looking like an additional $500 between us; $3000 instead of $2500 from Southern Wisconsin). We would like to avoid renting a car, and we'd be interested in adding Florence in on the way between Venice and the CT.

Tim - Thanks for the congrats!
Nancy - it excludes travel days, which is why I didn't mention inbound/outbound flights in the itinerary. The idea at this point is to start our journey on May 27th, arrive in Europe on the 28th, then depart on the June 11th or 12th.

If we did an open jaw flight, what would you recommend at this point? Would it make more sense to start in Paris, then go somehow get to the CT (How to get there? Train looked horrible; 23 hours and 5-6 trains on one route I saw) and then Florence and lastly Venice (where we would fly out), or still fly plan to fly easy jet to Venice, then make our way to CT via Florence and fly out of...Nice?

(ETA: Sorry this is all smooshed together; I added spaces between paragraphs but there seems to be some glitch since they aren't showing)

Unfortunately, there's no glitch - the ability to put spaces b/n paragraphs was recently taken away :-(

Remember - to get from Venice to Paris will cost €€€; open-jaws for $500 extra for both of you is actually pretty good. I'd strongly consider that. You will also lose a considerable amount of honeymoon time riding trains instead of sight-seeing and making memories in Europe :-(

Paris, then go somehow get to the CT (How to get there? Train looked horrible; 23 hours and 5-6 trains

It is certainly not necessary to spend nearly that long in transit. I can do it for you in just under 12 hours and a few simple changes. The question I would ask is would the two of you like a preview of the Cote d'Azur on the way, or would you rather see the Swiss Alps on the way south?

Leave Paris Gare de Lyon at 8:49 to Nice Ville. Sit upstairs if you can, and on the right if you want to look out at the Med. That's the only train you need to reserve on this run, the rest are regional or regional express trains. And only the TGV has the option of First Class - the others are 2nd only. 26 minutes in Nice to catch the double decker (upstairs and on the right) Regional-Express via Monaco to Ventimiglia. 14 min to get on the train to Genova Brignole which originates in Ventimiglia which is reasonably small station. In Genova Brignole you have 11 minutes to get the 19:09 train which not only stops in La Spezia Centrale at 21:00 but just before that also stops in Monterosso and Riomaggiore.
Total travel time 12:11.

or leave Paris Gare de l'Est at 08:25 via TGV to Strasbourg, a quick 2:18 run. A relatively short 8 minute connection onto the regional to Basel SNCF station which is attached to the Basel SBB (Swiss) station. 22 minutes to stroll over to the SBB side (maybe grab a takeaway lunch as you pass the various food stands including a sandwich bar on the outside of the Migros supermarket) join the 12:31
EC 57 Eurocity on platform 2. Because that train goes all the way through to Milan reservations are compulsory. If you missed grabbing food, or bringing it from Paris, snacks and beverages are available in 2nd Class,food and drink service at the seat in First Class. EC57 goes down past the Berner Oberland via Bern and Brig; although quite a lot of the mountains are seen from the inside of the new Basis tunnel there are still wonderful views of mountains passing through Switzerland, and then the short run into Milano Centrale. Half an hour there to get a bite and board the IC 675 Intercity to Genova Piazza Principe (Genoa). Because it is an InterCity service, reservations are mandatory. An easy 27 minutes to make the final connection, the ES 9787 EuroStar Italia to Rome which starts at Genova Piazza Principe. Because it is a Freccia all seats are mandatorily reserved. 2 stops later at 20:05 there is arrival at La Spezia Centrale. 11:40 total travel time, then onto the very short local train to your designated village in the CT.

Beautiful scenery either route, and certainly much less than 24 hours....

KnitterMonkey: Those look like summer fares from the midwest. They're putting on the squeeze this year. One way to economize is to fly at the end of the summer. I ran a test through www.itasoftware.com and found fares from Madison ranging from $1,200 to $1,300 in late September on the three major US carriers and Air Canada (or even Finnair). At that time, the cost to fly into Paris return is the same as the multi-city Madison-Paris-Venice-Madison route.
By the way, on these multi-city routes I find it more comfortable to fly into the furthest city (Venice) first and then return from the European gateway (Paris). It means a mid-day departure from the gateway rather than an earlly-morning dash to a connecting airport.

Eileen - Yuck re: formatting change. Harder to read when everything is all smashed together. My fiance just called Delta to see what he can do with his frequent flyer miles and he's booking our flights right now for less than $1900 (he had enough miles for one Euro roundtrip flight). Woohoo! We'll be doing an open jaw into Venice and out of Paris (thanks for the tip, Southam; makes perfect sense!)

Nigel - Thanks for the education! Looks like we'll be heading from Venice to CT and then CT to Paris by train. Is the CT to Paris section basically what you wrote for Paris to CT but in reverse?

You guys are all awesome! Thanks for letting me pick your brains.