Barcelona Spain then train to Venice Italy

It is a god awful long journey to make by train from Barcelona to Venice, and then back again !!!
Unless you plan stops along the way, say Provence and Cote d'Azur, then I wouldn't even consider it.
Find a cheap airfare and book it.

I definitely think you should fly to Venice from Barcelona and then fly back to Barcelona. I assume you've chosen those two cities because they are important to you, even though they're pretty far apart. (No criticism intended..I've paired those two cities for my next trip). Flights are very inexpensive between Venice and Barcelona. Both RyanAir and Vueling fly out of Barcelona...RyanAir into Treviso airport and Vueling into Venice/Marco Polo. Treviso is 19 miles away...not bad.

I think we paid about $40 for each air ticket, one way.

Lisa,

I agree with David, if you are set on visiting Venice on this trip, I'd definitely fly.

Having said this, with only 11 days, I'd stay in Spain. Spain is such a large country with a multitude of amazing cities you could visit.

You could also go to the South of France as David suggested.

I actually took this route (many years ago), however, we traveled to Florence (not Venice) & we flew home from Rome.

We did stop in Provence (Avignon) for a couple of days then did an overnight in Nice before traveling to Florence.

Looking back, this was a whirlwind type of trip & wished we could have spent more time in each of the cities we visited.

If you've not booked your flight yet, you may consider getting a 'multi-city flight into Barcelona then fly home from Venice.

Whatever you chose to do, do not waste your money buying a rail pass!

You can save $ by buying point-to-point tickets in advance.

You may find this website helpful: http://tinyurl.com/seat61-com-railpass-pay-as-you

Just out curiosity, I went to the bahn.de website to look at the rail trip. The best options seem to be a 20 (twenty) hour trip with 3 (three) train changes and an overnight train from Dijon to Venice. Returning, there is a route that takes only 15 hours, leaves Venice at 5.40 am and arrives Barcelona at 8.34 pm, with 4 (four) train changes.

If you are set on these two places, fly open-jaw with a short flight between the two. If you fly round-trip to Barcelona, you will waste 1/2 day or more flying back and need to stay overnight in Barcelona on the return to ensure getting on your flight home.

Day trips? Where?

Chani makes a good point -- fly open jaws into one and out of the other to eliminate a wasted half day backtracking just to fly home.

I really appreciate your input. That makes a lot of sense to fly from Barcelona to Venice. Thanks !! soooo much!! We are thinking of doing day trips while in Barcelona using the rail system to visit maybe Madrid or somewhere in france?
Also I think we will fly to Venice. There in Venice we were thinking of taking day trips to Florence, and Rome.
So you think we shouldn't buy the euro rail pass for 10 days? it's around $1000K US.

Any more suggestions would be awesome. Thanks again.

None of your day trips really make any sense, given where you're locating yourselves. Barcelona and Madrid are about 3 hours by train from each other...too far for a day trip. Venice and Rome will take even longer than that by train. It seems like you might want to do a little bit of research on what you really want to see. You only have 11 days...is this your first trip to Europe? If you're sold on Barcelona and Venice, then you could do Barcelona for 5 days with day trips to Girona and Figures. In Venice, you could do a day trip to either Padua, Verona or Vincenza. Those are all quite close on the train.

You could also spend your entire time in Spain quite easily. Have you already purchased your air tickets from the US? Have you booked your apartment in Barcelona?

IT'LL BE OUR FIRST TRIP TO EUROPE (honeymoon). I like this plan you mentioned. I do not have an airbnb for 5 days yet. We have not purchased our tickets yet. But want to purchase flights this week.

Lisa

Enjoy your honeymoon. Go to all the romantic places wherever you visit. But visit those places. Don't spend the whole time looking at the back of the train seat in front of you.

I know there is a huge amount of appealing additional places to see. You are a kid in a candy store. You can only fit so many gobstoppers in before you explode.

Same with travel.

Please forgive me for saying "less is more".

Thank you all for your comments. I was looking at our plan and it IS too busy. I'm going to see if we can just enjoy our time and not do so many day trips.
I like the plan of Barcelona 5 days and fly to Venice, stay 5 days and fly home.

If you haven't purchased your air tickets yet, your best bet is to buy open jaw tickets- which means you fly from the US to a city in Europe and then you fly home from Europe to the US from a different city in Europe. This cuts out a lot of backtracking. If you're sold on Barcelona and Venice, then fly from your hometown to Barcelona. After 5 days, fly to Venice. After 5 more days, fly from Venice back to the US.

Honeymoon = Romance = Venice = Rome = Paris = (perhaps) Barcelona

With ten nights why don't you include a 3rd city and concentrate on the destination rather than day tripping ...
Barcelona (4) >> fly to Venice (3) >> train to Rome (3)