Thank you everyone for being so helpful and kind. I will go forward armed with knowledge and confidence and will book our airfare based on best times/price! I will avoid Alitalia though that non-stop flight from LA is really, really enticing. And I will avoid going through Paris.

Doggma, that's funny but probably very true. I also told my husband, if he could drive in downtown Cancun, he could drive in Italy. :]

Your Alitalia flight might actually be run by a co-share.

The flight is code shared with Delta but operated by Alitalia.

We would highly, highly recommend B & B Sandra in Venice. We stayed with them several years ago.
http://www.bbalessandra.com/

Big Russ- Re: "Personally, we like the DK books and (of course) the FODORs books -- especially the pictorial ones...."

From some of you other comments, it appears you are from Texas, therefore I can appreciate why you'd need the books with pictures, LOL