we are leaving for italy in july/07 and i am trying to find the cheapest way to get from calgary,alberta to arrive in milan and depart from rome to arrive in calgary. any ideas on the best airlines and routes to take.

Try this site:

http://www.kayak.com/v1.0/s/kayaksearch.jsp

Try searching airfares on www.sidestep.com They search all different sites and let you know the best rate. I have flown twice to Europe with open-jaw/multi-city itineraries and got better prices on them than if I went round trip from one location. Good luck.

While on kayak, make sure you use the MultiCity feature.

Through, literally, months of checking various airfare websites, I found the best fares by far to be on www.faremax.com. Fares on that site were consistently less expensive than those found on kayak.com. I bought my open jaw tickets SFO-FCO/NAP-SFO last week and saved $150 per ticket over the best deal on kayak and almost $240 per tickets over the airline's posted fare.

>...Fares on that site were consistently less expensive than those found on...<

No single site always has the lowest prices.

I checked faremax against kayak for my upcoming Europe trip.

Faremax - $876
Kayak - $861
Delta - $856