How to plan an independent tour to Europe (Rome, Florence and Venice) for Cheap!

March 2011 was my first trip to Italy for 10 days. It was a wonderful trip and the experience was amazing, something that I definitely would do again with some modifications, I will include the details below.

I have wanted to go to Europe ever since I was 10 years old and I have been told over the years how expensive it was and how really bad things can happen to you if you don't know the country and its culture. So with that said, I began my research of Italy with the following criteria’s: cost, weather, culture, language, food, public transportation, popular sites, safety, exchange rates, U.S banks available in Europe, ATM, and finally, the cost of everything mentioned above.

First, I had to decide where I wanted to go in Italy, how long, and when. I goggled and discovered that the cheapest and least crowded time to travel was November - March.

When: March

Second, I wanted to know where in Italy and who should I book my trip through. I googled "Italy tours" and reviewed a couple of pre-planned tours on some of these tour guide sites (affordable tours, Globus, Trafalgar) but the prices were so expensive especially with the tours and meals included, so I looked into Independent packages where you get some bus tours but they would drop you off and let you tour yourself in pre-selected destinations, a bit more reasonable costing about $2000 for land only, for 10 days with hotels, breakfast and buses. Still I thought this is too much and continue on my search. I wanted to spend less than $1000 for hotels, transportations, land and air. After looking at every single tour group, I finally came across Gate1 on affordable tours website, I saw the pricing on there and as a rule of thumb, its best to go to the actual tour site for a better deal. I went on Gate1Travel and found 10 days independent tour for $599 - included hotels, rails and breakfast every morning, with flights it was $1099. I was ecstatic, in my mind; I am thinking what the catch is? I started looking into it and the catch was these flights were only out of NYC, flights from other cities would be additional costs. So I started my search for separate flights (initially to fly into Rome and fly out of Venice) using Orbitz which turned out to be a deal also with a caveat that flights would come in a day earlier or later, which at the time, I didn't really think to book an additional day at Rome or Venice, looking back that would been a better way to go...so I looked at just connecting flights to NYC from Tampa but ultimately decided to use Gate1Travel for ease. I booked the package deal so that the connecting flights would be timely. It ended up costing about $1300 for flights, hotels, rail passes, and breakfast daily, which was a phenomenal price.

Where: Rome, Florence, Venice

(note: a good trick to getting a better rate when looking on websites that are middle men for other tour sites, is to actually go to their site, this applies to finding good deals for flights also, for example: Orbitz or Travelocity - once you see the lowest flights rate, go to the actual airline's website, it is usually cheaper by $20-$50 and you may even get a better flight time...this is best for those who do not want to do connecting flights or travelling to multiple locations).

Company to book tour: Gate1Travel.com

Third, I wanted to learn everything I could as previous mentioned above. So my research tools included: the obvious, the internet, bookstore, and finally the local libraries.

1.     Internet: Weather, exchange rates, people's experiences, crimes, etc.

2.     Bookstore: I started of by going to the bookstore a couple of hours one weekend, I wrote down a list of books that I thought would be helpful after cross referencing other books available. Some of the books I used were: (note:I am listing the prices so you can see how expensive these books are and why I made a list) Frommer's Italy day by day - $29.95, Frommer's Rome day by day - $29.95, Frommer's Florence & Tuscany day by day - $29.95, Frommer's Venice day by day - $29.95, Conversational Italian in 7 days - $7.95 (which I ended up buying)....

3.     Library: I went home and logged into my local library's website and reserved these books. Now most libraries allow for books to be checked out for 2-3 weeks at time and you can go online and reserve them longer when your time is near expiration. So now, I have these books for research at my own leisure time rather than sitting in a bookstore for multiple weekends, I can read these books at work, during lunch time, on an elliptical at the gym...I would keep a small post-it pad with me at all times in case I wanted to mark the page(s) for later. After a couple days, I had an outline of my itinerary for my trip. I will be including snippets of my day by day itinerary below and what I did to reduce the cost.

So the itinerary included 2 days of travel time, 3 days Rome, 3 days Florence, and 2 days Venice.

Day 1 - Arriving in Rome

6:00 am: Arriving at Fiumicino (Leonardo da Vinci) - Rome's airport

• After customs and gathering of baggage
• Signs will direct you to the trains (treni)
• Buy tickets for a local train and the Metro
• Getting from Metro to Hotel
  Transportation: Buses / Metro Passes: Getting around Rome for Cheap!!

1.     Getting from Rome Airport to Hotel: look for signs of "Treni" - train station bought a "biglietto" is a train ticket (approximately 11 euros) at the airport to go into Roma Termini to catch the Metro line A to the hotel.

2.     Getting metro pass to go from Roma Termini to hotel. I bought Metro ticket good for 3 days - Biglietto per 3 giorni B.T.I. ( 3-days tourist integrated ticket) Price: 11,00 Euros, which were good on buses as well as Metro.

Popular Sites, Museums, Baths:

• Sites I used for info: http://www.rome.info (the price on this site seems to slightly outdated for some things but I still thought it was one of the better sites for actual information about rome), http://www.vatican.va/ (this site is accurate, pricing,etc.)