Munich/Venice

Given your choices, I'd include Venice, even though you could easily fill your days in and around Munich. Depending on your travel dates, remember that Good Friday and Easter Monday are legal holidays in Germany and probably in Austria and Italy, too. Easter Sunday is April 8 this year.

I like to keep things close, geographically, so I don't lose a lot of time to travel. I would probably do Munich and environs plus Salzburg.

I was debating the same thing and have been running a lot of scenarios to see how much time and money it would take to do Munich/Venice. It seems fairly close geographically (you know, here in the midwest every journey requires lots of travel time so we tend to be pretty use to that). It seems like there just isn't a fast train directly there. If anyone knows of such a train please share the info cause I didn't find it. I believe it was almost 7 to 8 hour train trip or a 6 hour drive and I couldn't really find a "cheap" flight. Anyway, it is certainly doable but with what I found it puts a bigger question mark on should we do it. Salzburg really seems to be the smarter choice but Venice is so tempting!

Jackie You know how in the Midwest you can drive for miles and miles, and see not a lot except miles and miles, and how you can see something from a long way off because of the flatness of the land, and how the roads are straight? Between Germany and Italy are big tall pointy mountainy things that all push up together and become known as the Alps. Roads and rails, cars and trains, have to wind between them and up and down valleys and passes. That can be very slow. Sometimes they have to go miles out of their may to do it. That accounts for the time.

Venice is so nice in early April, you could easily spend the whole week there and nearby, such as Verona, Padua, or Lago di Garda. Splitting a week between Venice and Munich doesn't make sense due to the ditance and travel time involved, as explained above.

If I may add me two cents worth one more time: If you have a week with the weekends on both sides added in then I'd still go for Venice and Munich - unless, and that's a biggie - you get over to Europe fairly often. Then I'd make Italy a separate trip altogether. If you don't go over that much and have never been in Venice, I'd do it. Two totally different experiences.