Thoughts on this --- Barcelona, south of France, Milan

Three countries is a lot of territory to cover in 8 days. I like to plan my trips by how many nights in each place. Two nights = one full day, and so on. According to your schedule you will have one full day in each location. That doesn't leave much time to see "the usual galleries, churches, museums and sightseeing.". With this schedule you will see a lot of train stations and the inside of trains. You might want to cut out one or two locations. Is there something special you want to do in Milan? In such a short trip you might want to skip Milan and/or Marseille. If you cut Milan you could do something like this - Fly into Barcelona. Stay 3 nights. That will give you 2 1/2 days. There is a lot to see there and you will be tired upon arrival. Train to Provence. Stay 3 nights. It is best seen by car, but you can do it by train. I found Arles to be a good base. You could still go to Marseille as a day trip from there. Train to Nice. Stay 2 nights. Fly home from Nice. If you want to cut Nice you could fly home from Marseille. Spend 3 nights somewhere in Provence and spent the last night or two in Marseille.

At least you have allowed yourself travel time. Is Day 1 arrival day, or did you consider that travel day lost (always a good assumption)? My criticism is the time in each place. Have you checked out some guidebooks from your library? For planning, I like to read books and take notes on sights I'd like to see in each place. I plan on only two major sights in a day. If I have extra time, I'll squeeze in a minor sight or two (if I'm up for it). I let the sights I want to see decide how much time I need to spend in a place. If I don't have time to see what I want, I'll add time or save the place for next trip. If you can't add days to this trip, I'd probably skip Marseille and add the time to either Nice or Milan, depending on which has more things you would like to see.

Thanks Brad -Day one is arrival day, but looks like I can get into BCN around 7 AM, so it affords me a good 1/2 day of sight seeing. Yeah wasn't sure about Marseille... will definitely check out Rick's books and a couple others. Don't want to spend a ton of time in Milan only because in 2014 we plan on doing a three weeker Milan/Lake Cuomo -> France (central, north and Paris) -> Belgium (Bruges, Brussels).

I'm not sure what the question is. For me, this transit-to-sightseeing ratio would be much too high. I'd stay a bit more put, maybe two regions in 8 days. But you should of course suit yourself.

Andrea, good point on flying home from Nice. More of a relaxing schedule this way. My cousin has been to Barcelona, but I am sure there's still plenty to see.