Northern Italy including cingue terre, lake region, venice

Lu, Given your list of destinations, my suggestion would be to start in either Venice or Milan, and return home from the other. You might want to check some Guidebooks to narrow down a few specific places in both the "lake region" and "Tuscany", as there are a lot of possibilities. You won't have time to visit all of them. The Italy Guidebook would be an excellent reference for planning Hotels, sightseeing, transportation, etc. You could perhaps make a "loop" from Venice - Bologna - Florence - Siena - Portofino - Lake Region (Varenna on Lago di Como would be a good choice). You could also do the same trip in the reverse direction. Happy travels!

For weather and other considerations, I suggest you start with the lake district, then San Remo, then Tuscany, and end in Venice (hoping it will be less crowded at the end of October than earlier.) So the flights would ideally be into Milan, and out of Venice.

Thanks for your suggestion we will look at the airlines to see which would be beat for our destination and departure