Advice on Which City (or cities) to fly into/out of

Regardless of your final plan, do fly open jaw rather that round trip in and out of the same city as it will eliminate time lost due to backtracking. If you drop Rome, consider flying into (but not our of) Venice as it is a great place to recover from jet lag, but not the easiest airport to get to if you have an early morning flight home. Your flight home can still be from Milan, or Florence depending on your final itenerary.

In to Rome, out of Milan
or
IN to Venice, out of Milan.

If you stick with Lake Como you will need to get lodging booked asap.
Another option to end trip is Stresa- on Lake Maggiore and you can stay there til you depart from MXP- it is closer than Milan, direct bus to airport.

to agree with ChristineH just above, if Venice becomes a place at the beginning or end, strong encouragement to fly IN to Venice but not out = for the flight home Milan or Rome are better because many flights from Venice are not long haul and not to North America, rather they connect at a major gateway airport elsewhere in Europe. Consequently they tend to fly from Venice around 6am which means leaving your Venice hotel at stupid o'clock. Far better to arrive and have Venice grow on you as you arrive....

for what its worth.

This past October, we flew from Houston to Venice (with layover in Munich.) Return flight was out of Venice (layover in Munich). Our flight left Venice at 8am, so it was an early morning to the airport. But the early morning water taxi ride was magical at dawn. We did have to backtrack back to Venice for the return flight. But the cost savings was worth it even with the extra night in a hotel.

If you stick with Lake Como you will need to get lodging booked asap.

Already? Wow, thanks for the heads up, I appreciate it.

If you skip Rome, you could fly into Florence or Pisa, but you will have a connection in Europe, which is also likely if you fly into Venice.

Consequently they tend to fly from Venice around 6am which means leaving your Venice hotel at stupid o'clock. Far better to arrive and have Venice grow on you as you arrive....

Thanks, Nigel. I definitely don't want to have to leave at stupid o'clock if I can avoid it!

If you skip Rome, you could fly into Florence or Pisa, but you will have a connection in Europe, which is also likely if you fly into Venice.

We would have a layover flying into Rome as well.

If you fly British Airways from Seattle (which is what we do yearly), you can fly into or out of Rome, Florence, Pisa, Bologna, Venice, or Milan; all with a layover in London at Heathrow.

The pricing varies and there are scheduling caveats that apply for some ( like a short layover for flying into Florence and Pisa) so check the schedules carefully and ask here if you have questions.

BA has options for flying back tomSeattle that do not require leaving your hotel in the middle of the night. One departs VCE at 12:40, connecting to the late after noon BA 49 (our usual flight) with a layover of 2.5 hours, which is OK. Or you can take the American Airlines 12:15 flight to Philadelphia for a 3-hour layover before continuing on to Seattle. This avoids Heathrow altogether.

I will say that we now avoid the Venice airport for both inbound and outbound flights. Inbound, because the options for getting to one’s hotel in Venice are either expensive (water taxi) or long, with annoying lines for tickets and little room for luggage ( Alilaguna or Bus plus vaporetto). We much prefer to arrive in Venice by train—-walking out of the station to be greeted by the sight of the Grand Canal expaningn before you is one of the nicest arrivals I know.

Bologna has become our favorite airport for northern Italy, if the schedules work out.

I don’t think there are non stop flights from SEA to Italy, so my preference would be for an Arctic Circle route flight (which is faster) that takes you directly from SEA to Europe, such as:
London LHR (British Airways)
Paris CDG (Air France/Delta)
Frankfurt FRA or Munich MUC (Lufthansa)
Amsterdam AMS (Delta, with KLM codeshare)
Dublin DUB (Air Lingus)
Copenhagen CPH (SAS)
From the above European hubs you can fly virtually anywhere in Italy, therefore you can organize your open jaw flights to and from any city in Italy that you mentioned, depending on which itinerary you prefer to undertake. My only additional suggestion is that you leave the city of your return flight as the last destination of your itinerary. So if you decide to return to SEA from Florence FLR (via one of the aforementioned European hubs), you would leave Florence as your last place to visit. Also be aware that Milan Malpensa airport and Venice airport are far from their respective city centers, so for an early flight, you would need a very early wake up. Bologna and Florence airports are the closest to their respective city centers (4 miles and 3 miles respectively).

20 years ago, we returned from Italy from Pisa. We stayed our last night in downtown Pisa. In the morning, we walked to the airport, rolling our suitcases. 20 minutes, tops. Small airport. Flew to Milan and then non-stop Milan to Boston.

Pisa is just a 45 minute to one hour regional train ride to Florence. Perhaps that might work for you as your arrival point in Italy. I’ve never flown to or from Florence. Depending on arrival time in Pisa, you could conceivably get to the train depot, hopefully leave your bags for a few hours and walk the town, and the Piazza dei Miracoli, before getting back to the train station to go to Florence. The cathedral in Pisa has some impressive statuary. Mostly ahead of the Renaissance by 200 to 300 years. Of course, the cathedral’s campanile is of some note, too. The leaning tower of Pisa.

If you fly into Rome, once you take the train from the airport to Rome’s train station, Termini, you could then easily get a fast train to Florence.

Pisa PSA airport (about 50 miles from Florence) has more flights than Florence, but its role has changed in the past few years. Both Florence and Pisa airports are owned and operated by the same company (Toscana Aeroporti Inc.) and the company has decided to differentiate the role of its two airports with Pisa specializing in Low Cost European airlines, like WizzAir, Easyjet, and especially Ryanair which operates a major hub out of Pisa, while Florence specializes primarily in traditional airlines to their hubs, like AirFrance, Lufthansa (with their AirDolomiti company), Swiss, KLM, etc. As a result, to come to North America with a traditional airlines you will have more options from Florence. There are some options out of Pisa with British Air to LHR, or Lufthansa (AirDolomiti) to Frankfurt, but with only one or two flights a day, which may or may not allow you to catch your connection to Seattle. AirFramce doesn’t even operate flights to Paris out of Pisa anymore. If FLR doesn’t work for you, then Bologna, which is equally close to Florence (60 miles) has more options than both Florence and Pisa with traditional airlines.