I am not, Donna, and probably few here on Fodor's are as most Fodorites tend to travel on their own.

Usually if you do travel on your own if planned carefully the trip will be less expensive than with a tour group.

A lot of tours have you stay outside of the main centers which is not ideal. And if any meals are included they are usually in restaurants/cafes that are very tourist oriented.

For an eight day trip personally I would suggest that just two of the cities in that tour would be the maximum I would want to visit as otherwise you would not really get any feel for the cities.

Have you thought about travelling on your own? If so I would either pick Venice and Florence or Rome and Florence or Rome and Venice.

You could do a multicity flight (also known as a open jaw flight) which means that you would fly into one city airport and depart from another city airport. That way you would not be backtracking and normally it doesn't cost more or much more than flying into and departing from the same airport.

You could travel between the two cities via the train which is very easy to do.

For example you could fly into the Marco Polo (Venice) airport, enjoy Venice and then take the train to either Florence or Rome for the remainder of your trip and fly home from either Florence or Rome.

Usually, because the flights out of Venice leave so early in the morning it is best to fly into Venice versus flying home from Venice.

Do you now which of the two cities out of three interest you the most? If not you local library should have some good travel books to help you decide.

And with all the information here on Fodor's you should find a wealth of information regarding hotels and restaurants that fit into your travel budget as well as lots of ideas for exploring sites and sights that you would enjoy.

You would, in my opinion, get more out of your trip but if you only want to visit Italy with a tour group I don't think you will get a lot of information from Fodorites regarding the touring company you are asking about but hopefully someone will have some information. Best regards and have fun planning your trip to Italy.

Donna, LoveItaly has said it very well. For your trip you can easily do it on your own. The trains are easy to take, and if you are visiting the cities you can't take a car into them anyway (autos are restricted in much of Florence, Venice is all water, Rome is insane) so you don't need one.

If you are worried about not speaking the language, in the cities most of the people you will encounter speak some English. And you can easily learn a little Italian by downloading the free podcasts like My Daily Phrase Italian. It's 50 or 100 (I forget) 5-minute lessons, each focusing on a phrase such as Hello, how are you? or Where is the train station? You can easily learn it before you go.