9 cities is a bit much for 22 days, especially if it includes your flights to/from Newark. Travel time is really going to cut into your two day stays, so I think you should seriously consider cutting at least 1 city. I’d save Barcelona for a future trip as getting there from Cinque Terre will involve a lot of travel time and hassle. A flight to Barcelona helps, but will still probably kill a full day.

Thank you for your advice. I think cutting a city or two is definitely the way to go. I decided to cut Berlin and Prague. I have family from Germany and Poland so I would rather wait and save that area for another trip so I will have more time to explore those areas as I wish to.

So my updated itinerary is here: http://www.eurotrip….

I decided to keep Barcelona, because there is nowhere else near it that I am extremely interested in visiting and I don’t know if I’ll ever be right in that area, so I figured I should do it now. I think I can take a train from Cinque Terre to Turin and then connect to a night train to Barcelona, so that is my plan.

Going Cinque Terre to Turin (or Milan) to Barcelona by train will mean about 18 hours on trains. Have you considered taking the train to Pisa and then hopping a cheap flight to Barcelona?

You could save some time by buying multiple destination tickets. Go to an airline site and select that option, then put in NY to London, and Barcelona to NY. Such tickets usually cost about as much as a round trip fare, but save you the time of getting back to where you first landed.

I’m not optimistic about finding a sale. They do have sales still, but usually for only a limited number of seats, and often for off season. May and June are not really off season. You should get a firm commitment on who is going and what you are willing to pay. Sales run out of seats very quickly, so you don’t have time to check with your friends if you find a pearl, because while you are checking, someone else will buy it. The low price tickets are invariably non refundable, and have stiff fees for any changes you want to make. Whoever is making the purchase should have precise data on each passenger, including the exact name on their passport, as they check the name on the ticket against the passport, and it’s hard to get them to make a change. Armed with that information, you can pounce on a good fare if one shows up.

I would buy your tickets before the end of March, since fares seem to increase in the 60 days before the departure.

I just looked into it and found a flight out of Florence for $70 so perhaps I will do that. Thanks!

I thought of Florence too. It depends on how you want to work things logistically. Do you want to leave Cinque Terre the afternoon of the 14th or morning of the 15th? If you left the 15th, you could train to Pisa, stow your bag at the train station, see the tower, then head to the airport for an afternoon flight to Barcelona. You could also do a similar thing in Florence with an evening flight. For the 14th Florence is definitely better. Note that even if you choose to fly from Florence many train routings will have you change in Pisa anyway.

I’m thinking afternoon on the 14th. The flights I found leave between 930 and 1030 at night from Florence so I would still be able to spend the morning in Cinque Terre. The only other thing I’m concerned about is getting from the train station to the airport in Florence, do you know how far it is and the best way to get there? Thanks for your help!

These should help:
http://www.frommers….
http://www.turismo.i…