Venice to Milan stops

All are great. If you're stopping along the way, I suggest Verona. But get a cab from the train station to the Piazza Bra. It saves a bit of a walk and you need the time to plunge into the old town center.

You can do easily do this if you use the R trains (regional) or IR (interregional) trains to Padua, Vicenza and Verona and not the high-speeds (EC, CIS, ICPlus). Don't book your trip on a high-speed from Venice to Milan on one train and expect to get off, visit and then board a later train on the same ticket. On the high-speeds, you need date, time and seat reservations so as soon as you get off and the train departs, the remainer of your ticket won't get you on a later train (there is a process but you definitely won't like it).

1) Take the R train (local) from Venice to Padua. About 40 minutes and no reservations permitted. Just buy your ticket, validate it and jump on. 2) at Padua, when you're done, do the same for Vicenza. 20 minutes on the train. 3)do the same for Verona. About 40 minutes by train. Finally, from Verona to Milan, buy a ticket on the high-speed. This train will require seat reservations. 90 minutes vs. 2hrs on the R train.

I'm sure that these will be quick visits but you can do it.

Larry's suggestion is a good one. Using regional trains, you'll have 6 hours from the time you stamp your ticket in Venice (wait until just before boarding to maximize time) to complete your trip to Verona on a single ticket. Spend as long as you want in Verona and then zip to Milan on the high speed train. If you want to take longer than 6 hours to get from Venice to Verona, then request individual regional train tickets between the 3 towns. They're good on any regional train, and you can just hop on the next one that's going your way. Cost would be slightly more than a Venice-Verona ticket. There are also inexpensive and frequent buses that run between the train stations and the main areas of historic interest in each of the 3 cities. If you only want to visit 1 of the 3, my recommendation would be Padua. The 3 cities have very different sights to offer and all are nice, so best advise may be to pick the one with the most sights of interest to you.

If you were to go just from Venice to Verona (without other stops) on the R train, check the time tables. We did this and found that, depending on the departure, there could be a big difference in travel time. Some of the R trains added about 30 minutes over the others (1h30m vs 2h).

Hey peeps, I'm doing the same thing only in reverse. Thanks for the info on the train system. Do you know (yes, I'm looking it up) if they stop anywhere near the Naquane Cave Art site? I understand it's near Brescia.