My husband and I are traveling to Italy for the first time and are looking for advice on good introduction tours that are not too much of a whirlwind. We are hoping for either a tour company with lots of leisure time or an independent company that we can sign up for day trips separately from our hotel plans with. Any suggestions?

What you're looking for is an "independent" tour which usually6 includes just the airfare, hotels, train travel and possibly one of two other items (i.e., transportation to/from the airport). You make your own daily plans.
American Airlines, Delta and American Express have offered these in the past.
We took an Amex one for our first trip and were very pleased. (The advantage of Amex was that we could use FF miles.)

Hi stac,

Give us a hint of what you are interested in and we can help you do your own personalized, customized, user friendly tour for less money.

Responding to ira, when traveling abroad, especially to a place where the native tongue is not English, I want to have the safety of relying on a group/tour to give me a feel for the city as well as the transfers to/from cities, airports, and hotels. My husband does not like to be tied down to spending the whole trip with a group of people. For example, when we were in England, we booked our hotel and flight through American Airlines and we were also able to book 3 independent day trips around the country with Evan Evans tours and we had a great trip. We were able to explore on our own and were also introduced to the city and were able to get our bearings.
For Italy, we want to at least see Rome, Florence, and Venice, but I don't know if committing to a tour group like Trafalgars, Cosmos, Globus, etc. is our best fit.

If you just want air and hotel try www.gate1travel.com or www.go-today.com