Northern Italy/Switzerland 17 Days Early April Itinerary Help

You probably need to give us some more ideas about your priorities to be able to make better suggestions about your "complicated itinerary." But, EARLY APRIL will still be late WINTER in the Alps. Many alpine ski resorts don't close until mid April, and that's not because of lack of snow usually, it's because folks are busy doing "spring" things. Weather averages in April for Lake Maggiore are highs in the mid 60's and lows in the mid 40's. For public transport check out Trenitalia.com or SBB.com (Swiss Bundesbahn) to start checking on train schedules from each point on your itinerary to the next one. Because of possible late snow I would stick to public transport... and all of Europe has buses that go everywhere, but perhaps not on an ideal traveler's schedule. You can check out FLIXBUS and similar companies. Have fun.

We’ve done trips like this many times. Milano Centrale can be a zoo, but if you don’t mind spending much of a day traveling between destinations, this itinerary is absolutely doable by train. Swiss trains are famously punctual—after more than 20 years of traveling extensively around Switzerland by rail, we’ve never missed a connection due to a late train. Regional trains go almost everywhere, and they work very well.

That said…

If I were doing this trip, I’d fly into Geneva, rent a car, drive through Chamonix into the Val d’Aosta, continue on to Lago Maggiore, then drop the car in Lugano and do the rest by train/bus—Tirano, the Bernina Express, and finally fly home from Milan. Yes, it’s an open-jaw itinerary and the cross-border rental drop fee isn’t cheap, but IMHO for this part of the world the flexibility is worth it, and this route avoids a lot of backtracking.

My wife and I just did something very similar in September—flew into Geneva, rented a car, drove through Chamonix and central Switzerland, and dropped the car in Interlaken. It was fantastic.

So yes, you can do everything by train and bus and you’ll have a great trip. And normally I’d advise against having a car (I asked about it here a year ago and you should’ve heard the howls 😄), but for this itinerary, I’d absolutely do it.

NickB makes a great point about weather. There is a real chance of snow in the Alps at that time of year. That's why I'd take the chance of driving up to Lugano, but take trains from there. But that's just me and NickB is right to take the weather into consideration for sure. The weather in the Alps can be really fickle: one minute it's bright and sunny and the next it's super dark and cloudy and the sky is just dumping snow. We did rent an all-wheel drive hybrid for just that reason.