OT - Any diser's visit Italy? A few questions if I may.

[vickiea]

My husband and I would like to take a trip to Italy and we were hoping to hear from a few people that may have gone from Canada. The flights from Edmonton seem ridiculously expensive - around $1400 per person, and that's just to get you there, then accommodations, car rental, etc, etc. Yikes

Could a 8-9 day trip where we visit Rome, Venice and a few other things in between be done for $5000?

Any help or insight would be great.

Vickie

[kroy2004]

Hi! DH and I were lucky to visit Italy and France for our Honeymoon and we did it fairly economically too (we didn't have alot of money left from the wedding :rolleyes:). Part of our air travel was paid for with aeroplan miles (my uncles), we left Fredericton NB, flew west (silly I know) to Montreal, west again to Toronto and than back East to Heathrow/London. The aeroplan miles covered return tickets from London to Fredericton and saved us about 1500 bucks! You might be able to find cheaper tickets to London from Edmonton, just watch for sale. We than flew from London to Rome for less than $500 bucks for both of us, airfare isn't too bad in Europe.

We booked our accommodations through Expedia and did all of our travelling on subway and Eurotrain. I wouldn't even worry about renting a car, the train system through Europe is amazing, so easy to get from one place to another. And you can purchase your train tickets and subway tickets for discounts before you go. We took an overnight train from Rome to Paris, stayed there 4 days and flew back to London from Paris to catch our flight home.

I think you can have a really nice vacation for $5000! Ours cost us about $2400 for 12 days in 2004, but that doesn't include airfare to London. Any questions, just let me know. I wish I could go back but we are trying out Disney first :)

[misslissa]

I'm not sure about out West... but Air Transat has recently started more packages to Europe. I would drop into a travel agent and pick up the Air Transat Europe brochure... it'll give you some good ideas!

[nonzerosum]

We did Italy last summer for 2 weeks and it was an amazing time. We rented a villa outside of Venice which was very beautiful, big (~10,000 sq feet, a couple of acres of grounds, private pool, private lake) and old. It was all very Italian. We did day trips around Venice, Padua, Verona, up to the alps, and lots of small villages. We took our 2 small kids (3 and 14 months at the time), so travel was interesting to say the least. This is going to sound terrible, but I don't remember the final cost. DH did all the budgeting and I take care of our WDW planning and budgeting. I'll report back on cost once I ask DH. I do know the villa was expensive and car rental was up there too, but we really saved on food since we did alot of our cooking. We used aeroplan points for flights and booked this about 10 months in advance, so this saved us lots of money too. Italy is not cheap by any means, but similar to Disney, you can do it on a variety of budgets. BTW, we live in Edmonton too. We flew Edmonton, Toronto, Frankfurt, Venice.

[Beavertails Queen]

Well when I did Italy I was a backpacker so my whole budget for 3 months in Europe was around $5000. But here are a few tips I would suggest.
Flights: Look for the cheapest flight you can get into Europe so London, Paris etc. and then look at European airlines like EasyJet or Ryanair. They often have really cheap flights within Europe that are cheaper then flying direct to your destination. I did this last summer flying Toronto-London and London to Athens and saved about $500.
Accomodation: Do research online to look for small hotels. Depending on how fancy or none fancy you want to get you can get really good deals on accomodations at hostelworld.com. There you enter the city and can pick what type of room and the price. It is a great site because it has really recent reviews from travellers.
Transport: If you are planning on going between a few cities (my favourites were Rome, Venice and Florence) I would suggest looking at the price of a Eurail pass. It may come out cheaper if you get one for say 5 train rides or something before you go.
One last suggestion if you are going to be in Italy and haven't looked/thought of the Cinque Terre I suggest you look it up. It is the most beautiful place.
Cheers, hope this is helpful.

[luvinyou]

I went to Italy in 2006 with a tour company for 10 days and it was about $2700 (covered everything but lunch) and we went to Venice, Florence, CApri, Sorrento, Pompeii, and Rome and I think I ended up spending 200 euros on food and shopping.

If you are considering taking the train places, look into flying as well. Last summer we looked into taking trains around London, Paris, and Belgium, and flights with Ryanair were like 1/3 of the price. I believe you have to pay to bring luggage on the flight though

[katiesmom2]

Subscribing....Dh and I really want to get to Positano one day.

[minnie56]

We are going this September. We are spending a few days in Lake Cuomo, Milan then on to Venice for 3 days. We then have a Villa booked in Tuscany (Lucca) for a week then will head Sth of Rome to Capri, Sorrento, Amalfi Coast before winding it up for a day or 2 in Rome and heading home. We are 4couples, the Villa works out to $2,500 a couple. Hotels vary...

Have been to Italy before but on cruises so had a taste of where I want to go back and linger. Have you looked at flying via Toronto and connecting to Zoom? They have some good round trip fares? If you look around, there are lots of good deals to be found. I would say your budget is 'do-able for sure :thumbsup2