My husband and I want to go to europe for our 1 year anniversary in mid-june 2005. We need to use frequent flier miles in order to afford going. We wanted to go to Greece but all the freq. flier spots are already booked. We went to Italy on our honeymoon this past June (went to bellagio, venice, florence thru tuscany, positano, rome).

Where should we go? We are only going for 8 nights and want to be able to have relaxing beach time, but perhaps also be able to be somewhere where there is stuff to do if we don't want to sit on the beach all day.

Really need your help!

thanks!

You might want to look at Sicily as a possibility. It has both beaches and interesting places to visit.

Go where you want to go. Connect to there by use of flights listed on www.whichbudget.com

Best wishes,

Rex

You don't say where you would be coming from, but what an absolute waste of time and money to go to Europe to go to the beach. Why people do this is beyond me. What do you do on the beach, anyway? Lie there and vegetate or something.

That's awfully judgmental, Christina. I don't see how we can infer anything about these newlyweds' time or money - - neither how much they have, nor how much they value it. Furthermore, we don't know where they live - - not even on which continent. If they live in Saudi Arabia, for example, the cost and time of traveling to Greece is quite comparable to many other "fun" destinations.

The island 'Rhodes'. No? Poland or Slovakia.

You could use your miles to fly to somewhere in Europe and connect with a bargain flight to Greece. Check out the discount airlines and see if you can make a reasonable connection. Otherwise you might consider Spain - perhaps the Balearic Islands or Andalucia - or Portugal.

South of France has great exploring of little villages in addition to beaches.

read through some of the Croatia threads

Beautiful water
Not too expensive (yet)
Nice people/food
history/architecture-things to see

We had no problems using FF miles flying on partner airlines all the way to Zagreb. Try an open jaw into Zagreb, out of Rome. Use Croatia air for cheap inter-Croatian hops.

thanks to those who responded -- particularly those wih positive answers.

we are coming from NYC -- we want the beach (or at least a nice pool) to be able to relax and take it easy but as i mentioned above, we also want to do other things besides lay in the sun.

We could do Spain -- i can get a flight to barcelona -- but where do we go from there? how do we get to the Balearic islands from barcelona?