aimeekm

I personally do not take out travel insurance. For me the cost isn't justifiable.

Here are the main items covered by travel insurance, and my logic behind not getting coverage.

Airfare
- Non refundable airfare isn't "use it or lose it" If you cancel your flight, the airline creates a credit that is valid for a year. If you rebook before the expiration a change fee will be deducted from the credit ($150-$250)

Hotels & Car Rentals
- I always book hotels or cars with at least a 72 hr no penalty cancellation policy

Lost Luggage
- Airlines will refund you for items you had to purchase do to late or lost luggage

Medical Emergency
- I'm young and healthy, so I gamble that expensive medical care will not be needed. I acknowledge this is a risk.

Unforseen delays i.e. weather or volcano
- Again, this is where I take a risk that I won't get stuck "on vacation", and I'd have to deal with the expense if I did.

So for you, you'll have to decide if a few hundred upfront is worth knowing if something goes wrong, you'll be reimbursed. Or if you'd rather save the money upfront, but be aware you may need to pay out of pocket if something goes wrong.

CharlotteJ

Hi again everyone. Ok, so the date to book the tour and get the early booking discount has past... so I am officailly doing this on my own. First thing... (after research of course) Plane Tickets. I have been looking at kayak.com and airfare.com to price. Also I have been reading past forums to see if I can learn anything from them. They have been very helpful but a few questions have come up.

First of all I am pretty sure I am going to be selfish, miss the birthdays and go in May, but I read somewhere it is not wise to go on May 1st. Why is that? My plan is may 13th so this shouldn't be a problem unless I go with my other dates which fall over the first, is this a problem?

Secondly, I have been reading about connections. I hear to fly into/out of Paris and London are more expensive because of taxes. Advice here? Also I have been reading about making sure you have a connection in Europe so you don't have to clear customs on a connecting flight in the states. If I do have to go through customs on my connection, how much time would you reccommend. I do see the beauty of a flight directly to Europe and just getting though customs right away especially incase of delays etc... but I need to know what I am looking for just incase.

When searching for my flights to Venice it is giving me the choice of two airports TSF (Treviso) and VCE (Marco Polo) How do I know which one is the main airport. Same with Rome I believe.

Also, what departure times should I be looking at, especially on the way there? On the way home, as long as we don't have to leave home at the crack of dawn I am more flexible.

Also... why is airfare.com so cheap?? It almost worries me! I know the prices are before taxes and fees but they are several hundred dollors cheaper than orbitz via kayak etc... Also a quick vent about Orbitz... is it just me or does everyone get the "Due to changing availability, the fare you selected is no longer available. Here's the lowest fare for your flight(s)." notice every time they are looking at tickets on orbitz?!! I doubt in the 15 minutes I have been looking at this flight at 6AM on a Friday morning 8 months in advance the flights have booked up so much they have to raise your prices. I don't get it, but it happens every time!

I am seeing a lot of flights where you fly into the UK or Germany but then spend the whole day in the airport waiting for your shortish flight to Venice. Not ideal.

Anywhoo enough about that, but so far this is the best I have found. airfare.com Please tell me what you think. Also if there is anything else a newbie should know about flying out of the country please let me know. Don't assume I know, I am pretty green

Arriving Flight

United Airlines SEA-Seattle Tacoma
Washington, USA FRA-Frankfurt Intl
Germany
13 May Sunday 02:00 PM
14 May Monday 09:05 AM 8718
0 Stops
Operated by: Lufthansa

United Airlines FRA-Frankfurt Intl
Germany VCE-Marco Polo
Venice, Italy
14 May Monday 12:10 PM
14 May Monday 01:25 PM 9086
0 Stops
Operated by: Lufthansa
Elapsed Time 14 hr 25 min

Returning Flight:
United Airlines FCO-Fiumicino
Rome, Italy YYZ-Pearson Intl
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
27 May Sunday 11:30 AM
27 May Sunday 03:10 PM 8589
0 Stops
Operated by: Air Canada

United Airlines YYZ-Pearson Intl
Toronto, Ontario, Canada SEA-Seattle Tacoma
Washington, USA
27 May Sunday 06:20 PM
27 May Sunday 08:28 PM 8525
0 Stops
Operated by: Air Canada

Elapsed Time 17 hr 58 min

Supposedly after taxes and fees this flight is 2800.10 all together for the 2 of us.

Mimar

First of all, taxes and fees can add up to quite a lot. We paid $800 in taxes and fees to fly from Seattle into Paris and out of Brussels.

The main airport for Venice is Marco Polo (VCE) and the main airport for Rome is Fiumicino, properly Leonardo da Vinci. You can find this out by googling "Venice airport." Treviso is undesirably north and far from Venice. The other Rome airport is Ciampino; it's OK but it's not used much for long-distance flights.

You will have the same problem when looking at trains. You probably want to arrive at the main train station for a city. It's more central and has better transportation connections. Again google to figure this out. Or ask here.

For your trip you will want to leave from the Venice Santa Lucia station (assuming you're staying in Venice proper as we greatly prefer) not from Venice Mestre, which is on the mainland at the end of the causeway from Venice.

CharlotteJ

Thanks Mimar, good to know about the trains!

Lexma90

Short answer re planes: Go with whatever fares are affordable to you, at the dates and times that seem best to you. Figuring out what those are is always the hard part!

The May 1 advice, I would guess, is because May 1 is a quite-big holiday in many parts of Europe, and places might be closed.

We prefer to fly Lufthansa from our city, because it's one of the very vew carriers (from our city) where we can fly nonstop direct to Europe, then connect in Frankfurt. We like Lufthansa as an airline, too. Looks like you're considering that for your outbound flight. For us, it has nothing to do with clearing customs; from where we are, we can take an evening flight on Lufthansa and have most of our trip be through the night. We gain a few hours of vacation time that way (rather than flying mid-day the following day).

I've never bought tickets through expedia, orbitz, airfare, etc. I've always been able to get tickets at the same price or cheaper directly from the airline. I prefer to keep the number of middlemen to a minimum, just in case there are problems.

Personally, if I had a Saturday off from work, I'd leave on a Saturday to get one more day of time in Europe.

On buying train tickets ahead of time, I've only done it for longer distances, where getting a lower fare matters significantly on the pricing, or one time when I felt that because of the day/time we needed to leave, to be in Milan in time for a scheduled time to see The Last Supper, I felt we needed to have those tickets in advance. I would guess that for the places you'll be going, the trains are pretty frequent, so if you don't get tickets for one train, you can just take the next one.

CharlotteJ

I was also wondering.. when booking through airfare.com, when you book 2 seats at the same time, are they together?

travlsolo2

Over the past 10 months, when I was looking for flights in October from the Midwest to Frankfurt and back home out of Madrid, I checked Kayak.com weekly, and then recently, daily. The fares went up and down like a yo-yo, and I finally bought the tickets about 3 weeks ago. I do always buy tickets directly from the airline, because if there are problems, there is no middleman to deal with. They say that fares are usually lowest starting on a Tuesday, but I found that the fares went down on a Saturday morning....and that's when I bought.
I don't know about airfare.com, but when you buy directly from the airline, you pick your own seats online.
Have fun on your trip! Venice is one of my favorite places!

J62

I also use various search engines to look for flights but book directly with the airline.

You can then manage your booking (seats, notifications, passport info, check-in, etc) on the airline website.

CharlotteJ

So when you book directly from the airline do you book online? For example: with the above flight itinerary would I book on United's website? I found the exact flight above, just a day earlier. The problem I am seeing is the tickets on United's website are a good $1000 more expensive each than airfare or orbitz even. Is there a trick I don't know?

I am thinking about leaving that Saturday as Lexma suggested. Not doing the math, I was already counting Sunday as a night we would be in a hotel so as far as the budget goes it isn't adding anything more. I probably would have taken that day off for preparation anyway.
Ok, I am embarassed to even ask this question, but do you have to have your passport in hand to give info when booking flights abroad? Having not needed them before we do not have them in hand yet. J62 mentioned passport info, which made me wonder.

CharlotteJ

I did a little mock runthrough like I was going to buy the tickets and answered my last question about passports, I think. Had a moment of panic there, don't mind me

ps- Thank you all so much for helping me, and putting up with my silly questions. I wouldn't be this far without you all.

CharlotteJ

Ok, I answered another of my own questions, I apologize for asking before helping myself! Yikes!
It looks like adding the Saturday was what took the price up. I tried to add a Monday on the end and it was about $200 more total (not bad) also I looked at a Monday through a Monday and that was the same $200 more. So Sunday to Sunday (my original plan) looks to be the best bet. I still think Sunday to Sunday would eliminate the most days that things will be closed while we are there. I realize I will have to do some tweaking of my itinerary once there to make sure I am where I want to be on the right days.
Thank you for your patience with me. I apologize for my craziness this morning. I will make sure to help myself next time before getting excited and asking you all Have a great weekend.

ellenem

Flights do vary by price, depending on the day of the week you a flying and by quirks of the airline gods. I recall one trip where simply jiggling the departure date a few days one way or the other save almost 50% on my ticket. This was a few years ago, so these same savings may not be realized now.

We were traveling just before the summer season. Midweek travel tends to be cheaper than weekend travel. I recall that I initially chose a Thursday departure date, and so my roundtrip ticket to Italy was $1200. When I backed up one day for Wednesday departure, the ticket cost adjusted to $950. I backed up to Tuesday departure—$690. The Monday departure returned to $950. For our two tickets, we decided on Tuesday and saved a good deal of money for other expenses. Not everyone has as open a schedule as we did to make such adjustments.

If you don't feel able to manipulate the online systems, you might telephone the airline directly. Nowadays I think most airlines charge a slight fee to book via the telephone, but my experience has been that the telephone reservationist can see the flight availability and prices quite easily and advise you on which flights which days are offering the best options, getting the fee back in ticket savings.

kybourbon

I use itasoftware.com to search flights, but book directly with the airline. No way I would book this early for a flight in April. Register for you flight choices on a couple of websites that notify you when there is a price drop and you might get a better deal.

Flying in and out of major airports is usually cheaper than a city like Venice. Ita lets you search nearby cities. Sometimes I will find a sale to a nearby smaller city, but usually Milan MXP and Rome FCO are cheapest. Lately, I can fly out of my very small local airport (LEX) cheaper than larger airports an hour or two away (CDG,SDF).

You can't book on ITA. You have to go to the airlines website to book. Just choose the same times/flights. I'm in a Delta area and their website is a mess. I usually have to search by time, not fares to make the flights show up that I've found on ITA.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

CharlotteJ

When do you suggest booking flights then if this is too early? I just would like to do that first so then I can A) not worry about it anymore and B)have dates nailed down to start planning the next step. How far in advance is ideal? I think $2800 total for both of us to fly after taxes and fees is a price I am okay with paying, I don't want to do mid week to mid week for the reasons I have explained, so should I still wait?

greg

If you look at the seat availability, you find that there remain still a lot of seats on the days you specified. What this usually means is that the airlines are trying to maximize revenue mostly from those who must book this early to fly on specific dates. They are not yet at the point where they can dictate any price for few remaining seats.

This year, the airlines tried to do the same, but the price collapsed on routes originating from my homebase as the summer approached. Of course, I can't predict what would happen next year.

I am also of the opinion that it is probably too early. I too am looking for fares in March-May range right now.

cbgetaway2015

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