Best of Sicily tour mid March and flying out of Florence.....help!

Not all museums are closed on Mondays, you need to check for each venue (almost all noteworthy museums have full-fledged English websites these days with visiting info - prices and opening hours at least).

You have 8 nights. If you want to visit Venice, you could fly Catania-Venice, stay there 2 nights, and then take a high-speed train (never a bus!) to Firenze and stay there the other 6 nights. From there, with train, you could visit Siena and the Cinque Terre as day-trips.

Alternatively, you can fly Catania-Venice, stay there 2 nights, then take trains to one of the Cinque Terre towns, stay there for 2 nights, stop in Lucca for one night, return to Firenze by train and stay there the following 3 nights. In that case, it is a stretch to use one of the 2 full days in Firenze to visit Siena (there is always more to see in Italy than time available on most itineraries). This will be a busier itinerary.

If you bypass Venice, then you can fly Catania-Firenze (I think Ryanair actually flies to Pisa, not Firenze, please double check), take a train to one of the Cinque Terre towns in the same day (27), since it is already mostly a lost one. Stay there 2 nights. Go back to Lucca and stay one night there. Say the remaining 5 nights in Firenze.

Beware of too much "hotel-hopping" when traveling alone, i.e., staying just one night at every place and moving one. These transfers might work ok-ish in an organized tour where everything is set. Traveling on your own mean at least a half-day lost while changing hotels in places you have never been to.(#)

Lucca and Pisa are on the railway line that connects the Cinque Terre with Firenze. Hence the suggestion for one night stop there.

(#) There will always be someone arguing that they can do the hotel-hopping thing and never miss more than 1 hours in the process (+ travel time between cities). They will stay in bad/overpriced hotels closest to train stations and claim (I doubt that really happens) they can always find a shopkeeper willing to store their bags for the day in cities without station lockers. If, like me, you don't have their vastly superior otherworldly skills, or if you don't want to overpay (or compromise in quality) of the most convenient hotels, I suggest not to pack to many one-night stops in one week of independent travel.

We were on this fabulous tour in April 2016. We flew to Rome, stayed a couple of days and then flew to Palermo on the day before the tour started. At the end of the tour, we flew from Catania to Rome, stayed overnight, and went home from there.

We wished we had spent another day in Catania, since the tour stop was only one night.

Nonstop flights from Catania to Rome are very frequent and inexpensive. Have you considered visiting Rome and then continuing on for the rest of your visit?

You could also spend the first few days seeing a part of Sicily the tour skips--the small Baroque towns in the SE corner of the island (Ragusa, Noto, Modica, Scicli). That will cut into your time for mainland Italy, but it's easier to travel back to mainland Italy on a later trip (which I guarantee you'll be dying to do) than to get back to Sicily. It's not like you'll have time to see everything you'd like on the mainland in just 8 days, anyway.

Thank you for the advice. I know definately I do not want to do a bunch of different hotels. It is very time consuming and logistically burdening to pack up, find the next stop, unpack, pack around your luggage and all.

I keep reading in many posts to not overthink the planning and planning too much. if you just schedule a half a day and relax the remaining day you will find things that will spark your interest. But relaxing and enjoying the culture and scenery is what I truly desire.
I am not a fast paced kind of person. I want to soak up 'Italy' not run here and there.
Any other suggestions that would be helpful?
I don't think I want to do Rome, only because realistically, there is only so many days and I want it to be relaxing.
I know there is way too much to see in one visit. So, I want to enjoy what I plan and not be stressed out.
Suggestion on staying in Florence? Down in the middle of town? North of town? the hills of Florence? I don't mind walking. I would love just a beautiful setting and feel like I am not staying in an area with hundreds of other tourist (if that's possible?)

After 2 weeks of changing rooms every couple of nights, the rest of your trip might be more enjoyable if you don't move around so much. I'd suggest using Lucca and Florence as your bases. You can day trip to Cinque Terre from Lucca and day trip to Siena from Florence. It's also possible to day trip to Venice from Florence, although I'd save Venice for another trip.

I flew to Florence after my Best of Sicily tour, opting for an Alitalia flight with a connection in Rome. The price was quite reasonable and the Catania departure wasn't at an ungodly early hour. If you do decide to limit your bases to Lucca and Florence, you might consider flying to Pisa, which is near Lucca. However, my recollection is that Alitalia flights to Pisa were quite a bit more than flights to Florence.

This is why I love this blog.....what great ideas everyone has! I love the idea of a base in Lucca and Florence.
I travel for my work so I understand the packing up and moving to another town, its tiring and you never feel grounded anywhere. Its like when you stay somewhere for a few days it feels like you have a home to go back to.
I just wonder what condition the trails are walking in the CT area? I am sad if I won't be able to do the trail between the towns.

Is there a place to stay in Lucca and Florence you think are better areas than others?