Air travel - Seattle to where in northern Italy?

What Steve said.

You can also find cheap flights from Seattle into Munich (and sometimes Vienna), which can save enough to be worth it, and the trip the Alps is worth it.

Seattle has no non-stop flights to Italy, which means you will have to layover somewhere. Personally, I prefer to get all the way to Europe, which probably means you'd be stopping in London, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt. Frankfurt can often have good prices.

Often I find the best prices flying from Seattle to Milan. To Florence is usually more expensive. Another possible is to fly into Rome and start your trip in Florence. However, I don't think you're going to get a signficantly cheaper flight into Rome than Milan, and then you have the additional expense of getting up to Florence.

I would suggest you look at open jaw into Milan and out of Venice (or vice versa) and also round trip from Milan. Those are likely to be your best options, but play around with different combinations. You might be able to find something into Pisa instead. And the Rome idea mentioned above is also a possibility.

All really great bits of valuable data - thanks all!

Cory, I booked our 10/2009 trip a month ago, and found that milan was by far the cheapest and easiest to fly into. We wanted to go open jaw and leave from Venice, but it was cost prohibitive. It was cheaper for us to stay an extra day, catch a train from Venice back to Milan, and stay in Milan proper the night before we came home. When I say cheaper, it really worked out to be a wash, but who doesn't need a reason to stay another day! Good luck, and Enjoy.Jeff

It looks like swiss air has the best deals for you from seattle. venice is the most expensive. So you could fly into milan and train to como. then train to venice. then train to CT then florence and fly out of florence. Time is probably the same