My 8 year old son and I are traveling to Switzerland this July. We'll be staying with my sister in Basel for a month. First of all I'm looking at flights at @ 1,000.00 for the each of us, including taxes. Is that going to be the cheapest or is there any tips to getting better airfare. Secondly, are there any suggestions of fun things to do with an 8 year old ? Also, I'm flying out of Pittsburgh, home of the super bowl winner the Steelers!

1. Use Farewatcher services on travel websites like Travelocity or Orbitz to alert you of fare specials. Be prepared to strike when a good fare appears. I've used sidestep.com to compare fares across airlines, and it's a fairly good tool (although with five commercial airports, including three international, within 40 miles, I'm pretty much assured of a great fare wherever I'm heading).

2. Post queries about your destination on the Europe board.

3. Flying out of PIT is a problem, since that ghost-town airport is dominated by few airlines (although Southwest being there must help fares to a few markets). And the Superbowl is past. In the global scheme of things, it doesn't matter. You need to move on now to things that do matter. Like traveling to Basel in July!

You may have to piece together a trip using one carrier to JFK and then another to Switzerland. I'm looking at that possibility-- using JetBlue to fly to the East Coast then connecting to an international carrier to Europe (Spain or Italy, I haven't decided), instead of flying out of LAX (I'm not so married to nonstops). YMMV.

I think you won't find anything much cheaper than a grand. Perhaps a hundred bucks or so, if you look at combining a PIT-New York and New York-Basel ticket; or PIT-London and London-Basel, or even three tickets. I'd rather spend the little extra and have everything on the same itinerary and won't have to worry about schedule change and missed connections.

And I complain when I had to pay $140 roundtrip from jfk-vie-gva-vie-jfk

Hi ...

How about getting a cheap flight to London, then use one of the lost cost carriers to fly to Switzerland?? I'm sure Easyjet/Flybe/Ryan Air ect go to Zurich or Geneva.

Mark