We did three months of touring in Germany, Italy and France last year.
All of it featured great scenery, excellent food and fantastic people, here are some of the most prominent impressions:
Italy has a lot of local industry, and these areas can be very poor with a lot of vacant small towns with few restaurants and things like ice cream is Nestle instead of local "Gelato". If you want to travel in the nicer areas, stay in the alps/dolomites region as well as tuscany/umbria. Lake Como, Maggiore and Trasimeno are beautiful areas.
France is more homogenous in its beauty, except for the richer tourist areas of the south coast, and the industrial harbours like Le Havre. If you stay inland or to the south west, there is very hard to "go wrong". A tip is to follow the rivers like Le Tarn, Dordogne, Garonne, Lot, etc. They feature great little villages and towns around every corner.
When it comes to food, France is the clear winner, Italy a strong second. Italy has the best produce, but the chefs of France are a step ahead. The numerous revolutions sendt master chefs from the palaces out into the "wild" and they taught the public their secrets to be finely enhanced as time passed. Italy is more "the tomato tastes so good natural, why do anyting to it other that serve it with cheese."
It's all very personal of course, if you like pasta and pizza, Italy is your winner, if you like exquisite sauces, sous vide meat, and foie gras, France is the way to go. (By the way, we where served the best pizza in France...)
If you want to get a little of everything, tour the alps.... There is a chalet around every corner, and if you travel slightly out of season you do not need to book anything in advance.
When we traveled, a way to find b&b, chalet and in italy the fantastic "agriturismo" (agricultural tourism) was basically to stop at McDonaldas to use their free wifi with our iphone, and use google maps to find "little red dots" of accomodation as well as using tripadvisor to verify if it was a nice place to stay.
