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 HotelTransportation: 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.)
