Ten nights tour of north Italy for 3 - flying into Venice and out of Rome

You need to talk about "nights" at a location. 2 days in Varenna - does that mean only 1 night or 2 nights? I'm just guessing you mean 1 night in Milan, 2 night in Varenna, 3 nights in Vernazza. That's over half your time (6 nights) already gone. You've got 1 night in Rome somewhere before your flight home so now you only have 3 nights left. Both Venice and Rome deserve way more than 3 nights!

Actually a much more feasible itinerary would be 3 or 4 nights in Venice, 2 or 3 nights in Florence and the remaining nights in Rome. That would maximize your sightseeing and minimize the wasted hours on traveling.

As your current itinerary stands you fly into Venice, train to west Milan?, train to north to Varenna, train to southwest to Vernazza, then train south to Rome? Sounds like an inordinate amount of time traveling - when you could just make 2 high-speed jaunts Venice -> Florence and then Florence -> Rome.

IMHO

clarification: two nights in Varenna after a couple of stops in Milan around noon on Sunday.

Thank you, Tim. Our first brief tour of Italy was spectacular though brief. Two years ago, after 3 nights in Paris and 3 nights in Switzerland we traveled by train to Venice > Florence> Amalfi Coast > Rome. The amount of time on trains with only one night in Venice and 3 every where else allowed a good first impression of Italy. We realize we are maximizing our reach, but we hope to do more than a whistle stop tour. Yours is good advice, and we will take it.

I don't understand why you are flying to Venice if you want to visit Lombardy and Liguria. It would make more sense to fly to Milan, which is also cheaper in most cases.
If you fly to Venice and out of Rome, the most sensible itinerary would be:
2-3 nights in Venice
2-3 nights in Florence
2 nights Cinque Terre
3 nights in Rome
(Just adjust the nights in Florence/Venice so that the total equals 10 nights).
However in early April the weather may be rainy, in which case the Cinque Terre would not be a good place to go. If you ditch the Cinque Terre add time to any of the other locations depending on your preference. If you add to Florence, you can take day trips within Tuscany.

If you intend to visit Lake Como, then it makes sense to fly into Milan, not Venice.
Fly into Milan, and take trains to Varenna on the day of arrival (most flights from North America arrive in the morning to Europe).
2-3 nights in Varenna
2 nights Cinque terre
2-3 nights Florence
3 nights Rome
If you want to visit Venice, in addition to Varenna (Lake Como), then you need to ditch the Cinque Terre. 10 nights aren't enough for everything. In this case you would do:
2 nights Varenna
2-3 nights Venice
2-3 nights Florence
3 nights Rome
(once again adjust nights to equal 10 in total)

Roberto's suggestions are very good. If you can buy train tickets far in advance, the trip from Milano to Venezia costs €9 each, no changes or refunds after purchase.

Thank you, Roberto and Zoe! We are purposefully sampling four areas in 2 and 3 night stops. We discussed returning to Florence with our daughter and became enamored instead with seeing some sites in Milano and Lake Como. We are trying to be prudent in our travel regions, pace and sequence. Our hope in this post is to take our existing framework mentioned earlier and collect recommendations to flesh out our itinerary.

April 1 - arrive Venice (Venezia in Italian). Try to stay awake all day and make the most of it. Check in and shower if the room is ready, resist the urge to sleep. Get out and do outdoors things, walking in the daylight. Allow yourselves a one hour nap at 5:00PM if you must, then dinner. To bed at 9:00 and by 6:00 AM the 2nd you are more-or-less acclimated.

April 2 - More Venice sites or possible trip to Murano, Burano and Torcello if the weather is good

April 3 - Early departure (8:00AM if possible) for Milano. Buy your advance tickets on the Frecciarossa as early as NOW. (They start selling 120 days out.) Stop in Milano for your priority sites, but continue on to Varenna to arrive late afternoon. You will buy your regionale train tickets at the station when you are ready to go, but check the schedule in advance.

April 4 - Varenna

April 5 - Continue on to Vernazza. Skip Pisa.

April 6 - Vernazza - what you do here depends on interests. Hiking? Take the ferry to PortoVenere (nice town to tour), or just explore each of the villages using Rick Steves' self-guided tours.

April 7 - Vernazza

April 8 - To Rome via La Spezia. Buy your Freccia tickets now for discounts. Try to leave as early as possible but pay attention to the train schedule from Vernazza to La Spezia. You can only get ou so early.

April 9 & 10 - Rome

April 11 - Depart

You mention the Omnia Pass. Are you sure you will get the full value out of it?You have to do a little math to determine that.

If you need more details, please post again or PM me.

Grazie Laurel! Your day-by-day format was exactly what we needed. I will PM my questions to you and visit your blog.