Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

So we are playing with the idea of a tour, but being that I studied in Italy, I feel we can do it ourselves bc I am familar with the Eurorail.

I would like to speak to a travel agent to get an idea of good hotels in the cities we are looking to go to.

Right now I am thinking:

Start in Venice

Work our way to Florence, with day trips to Siena and surronding towns

Rome

Work our way south...either Amalfi Coast or perhaps fly to Taormina, Sicility for a few days

Any suggestions would be wonderful

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

We did the opposite:

Started in Rome
Drove to Siena and Florence (spent one night in a Tuscany villa)

Drove to Venice

Then flew to Sicily

A family friend is a travel agent in Palermo and she set everything up for us. Driving was easy since we had navigation. Let me know if you want her information,

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

Oh that sounds wonderful!

I sent you FM...thank you for your help!

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

i originally booked a tour through globus b/c a friend highly recommended it. good thing i booked it through a travel agent at liberty travel b/c globus wound up canceling the dates we chose, figures!

the travel agent helped us to find hotels and to pick tours of museums, wineries, tuscany, islands, etc that we wanted to go on.we did everything on our own and it all worked out and was better and easier than i thought it would be. we used liberty travel in levittown and i can give you our travel agents name there, but i'm sure any of their agents could help you! We went from Rome to Florence to Venice.

Though i have heard that Globus tours are very good as well! good luck!

Message edited 9/5/2009 11:39:41 PM.

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

We booked our honeymoon with Travel Tom from LIWeddings. We flew into Venice, took the train to Florence then to Rome and flew out from Rome. We had great hotels and day trips, all the details were taken care of in a book of vouchers-so easy! I highly recommend Tom! Good luck!

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

I've been to a few of those cities and can try to remember the hotels we stayed in. I do remember the hotel in Florence because it was the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in in my life, and if anyone ever has the chance to stay there, I say jump at it. It was a Westin Excelsior.

In Rome, I think we stayed in a Hilton but it wasn't in the center of everything and pretty far from a subway stop.

In Venice we stayed at a really nice one to - maybe Hotel Bauer - but I could be totally wrong!

In Sorrento we stayed at a Hilton too and it was very nice and walkable to the town. I love Italy!

Be sure to hit the outlets like Gucci and Prada!!

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

Re: Italy- recommend you travel agent or share your expertise

We originally wanted to book with our usual Travel Agent, but I also started looking into costs on my own and we were able to do our trip for a STEAL!!!! I booked our flights directly with Alitalia and they happened to be having a promotional rate so it was insane, in a good way.

Then I looked and looked for recommended hotels, booked directly with the hotels for the best deals.

We started in Rome for 5 days and then did Florence 3 days, Siena 1 day and Venice 1 day. We had an amazing time and traveled solely by Trenitalia (booked directly on their website before we left for the discount deal) and by SITA bus (from Florence to Siena) and we booked that on the same day.

You can definitely do it on your own if you want. I planned the whole thing like in a month and a half. And I bought the Rick Steve's Italy book to get ideas on what to do in each city, downloaded the free audio tours for our iPod, and read a lot on TripAdvisor for help on tips and suggestions at each place.