Our plan has always been to go to Italy this summer.  This thought has been floating in our household for about 6 months and yet (until this morning) not a single thing was booked.  No plane tickets, no accommodation, no train… nothing/nada/zip.  In fact, besides a very broad idea of when and where we still totally up in the air.  I thought the mere idea of thinking about it would somehow make it magically plan itself… and with getting this website set up I have let things slip a teensy bit.  I was feeling a tad overwhelmed and unsure where to begin so I decided to take my own advice; I looked at this site and went to the Obstacle 'It's Too Much Work to Plan!'.  Where to begin - well, how about the dates?  Last night we sat with the calendar and played around with the airline sites and decided on when - August 6 - 27.  By leaving on the 6th we actually arrive on the 7th which makes for just shy of 3 weeks.  Okay, next comes where.  Well, Italy was what we were thinking (and the fact that I've been taking a Continuing Ed Italian class made that a must).  But Italy is a big place - how do you narrow it down?  We'd been discussing it and had previously decided to stay north of Rome as it will be crazy hot in southern Italy in August.  I'm sure it will still be hot elsewhere in Italy, just hopefully not a tandoori oven.  As far as the cities/regions we want to visit Rome is a must-do if only for a few days, as well as Florence and the requisite Pisa.  Ideally we'd like to stay by the Mediterranean for awhile and just relax, but we'd also like to go to Venice.  Oh, and just to mix things up we have some Dutch family holidaying in the lake region of Northern Italy at that time and it would be great to stop by for a few days and visit.  So…. how does that all fit in?  This blog will document real-time planning to show the process I go through and how much I empathize and understand how complicated planning a trip like this can be!

First of all - the ticket decision.  After looking at various airlines (and comparing the pros and cons of them all) we've decided to fly with KLM.  We have flown British Airways the last 3 times overseas but this time they were over $500 more per ticket to fly into our desired cities.  Air Canada had a seat sale (and it was actually a really good one) but they stop in Frankfurt and left at a very undesirable time.  KLM flies through Amsterdam and, much to our delight, was almost exactly the same price as Air Canada.  We have a lot of family in the Amsterdam area which makes it hard for us to fly through without stopping, so we've decided to take the last 3 days of our trip and stay for a quick visit in the Amsterdam area.   (It's also a great excuse to stock up on a suitcase full of fresh Dutch licorice!!)  KLM allows the stopover to be extended so it will still be considered part of our return ticket and thus not increase the ticket price.  To summarize, we'll start the trip by flying into Rome, touring around in yet-to-be-decided locations, and flying home from Venice (with the aforementioned stopover in Amsterdam).  By flying into one city and out of another we avoid having to return to a place we've already been, and the price stays the same.  (As an added bonus, the kid's tickets are $400 cheaper than the adult tickets - good deal!)

We had enough points on our credit card to book all four tickets and only needed to cover the cost of the taxes.  All added up we spent just under $900 for the four of us to fly on 3 distinct legs of our trip.  Good deal!  Now that the tickets are booked we need to play around with our actual locations - the hard part!  I have done some preliminary searches and know that there is availability in all of the places we're considering so now it's just a matter of narrowing things down and making some real decisions.  I'll post as I make them so that you can see the order that things are done and how I figure it all out.  Okay, now off I go!