Need trip planning HELP, Italy and Paris

Old Sep 25th, 2014, 03:09 PM
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Need trip planning HELP, Italy and Paris

Planning a trip for next fall and would like to visit Paris, Venice, Florence and Milan. Looking at airline fares and it seems much more expensive to fly in/out of different airports, and flying in/out of Milan seems to have the best fares. How can I arrange seeing all the above and fly in/out of the same airport without wasting time backtracking? Thanks!
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Old Sep 25th, 2014, 03:15 PM
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Wasted time is worse to me than wasted $. For the few extra $$ [may not even be the case all the time] it costs to do open jaw, the saving of not having to back track is well worth the cost.
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Old Sep 25th, 2014, 03:26 PM
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I suspect you are not doing it right---you need to use the " multi-city' option at Kayak.com I bet the price is about the same.
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Old Sep 25th, 2014, 03:36 PM
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Are you pricing 2 one way tickets? If so, that is why it is more money.

As Bob indicated, you want multi-city. For example:
JFK to Milan and then Paris to JFK.

That leaves you to plan the transportation from city to city; train or low cost airline. I used http://www.skyscanner.com/ to do that for our upcoming trip.
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Old Sep 25th, 2014, 07:46 PM
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We booked our tickets for next Spring flying into Paris (from the U.S.) and flying out of Rome. It was the same price on Delta. We used the multi-city option.
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Old Sep 25th, 2014, 08:34 PM
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>>>Looking at airline fares and it seems much more expensive to fly in/out of different airports, and flying in/out of Milan seems to have the best fares.
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Old Sep 26th, 2014, 06:11 AM
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How much time do you have planned for this vacation? I'd want 3 weeks or more but certainly not less than 2 weeks.
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Old Sep 26th, 2014, 07:38 AM
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As other mentioned, I suspect you added two super expensive one-way tickets instead of the multi-city. Multi-city can be either about the same or marginally more expensive than a round trip. This trips many first timers. They assume that if they get the lowest long distance airfare, they automatically reduce the overall trip cost. It does not work that way. If you read many other sagas in this forum, they end up paying more overall to compensate for entering/departing from the wrong airport as well as spending less time where they wanted to go, and more time in airport and backtracking logistics. Pay more and get less. Is this what you want to do?

The itinerary suggested by kybourbon or its reverse reduces unproductive travel logistic hassles, time spent doing them, and the associated cost.

Since Paris is a remote location, it is either the entering point or the departing point. You also have option of going east or west in Italy. The way look at this is to actually construct 4 scenarios: Paris first/Paris last, then for each look at Italy west to east, Italy east to west.
Look at how the days you land in each city align with
1. flight between Paris and Italy
2. Hotel availability/prices for each scenario in each city
3. Open/close days of the places you want to visit in each city
4. Transportation logistics in Italy
5. Special events in the target cities you want to go/avoid

Usually, few scenarios are dead on arrival - things closed on the day you are in town, no flight/only expensive seats on that day, etc. You would then be left with few contenders.
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Old Sep 26th, 2014, 08:50 AM
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Do you really want to visit Milan or did you just add it because you thought it would be the best for flights?
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Old Sep 27th, 2014, 04:56 AM
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Have you been to Rome? I suggest you consider visiting Rome instead of Milan - it is a fabulous city.
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Old Sep 27th, 2014, 05:31 AM
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If it is much more expensive, I also imagine you are not looking at the fares properly. But of course fares from different cities are different, they are if RT, it's not an issue of it being open jaw. Because some cities are just more expensive to to their distance or airports. Paris and London are usually about the cheapest for me, Frankfurt isn't bad due to United. Italian cities are not usually the cheapest to fly to/from for me as they always cost me being farther away from the US. Now the OP doesn't say where they are flying from, so hard to predict.

Milan is a big business city so you can find flights there about as cheap as Paris or London, probably, from say JFK or EWR. Should be about the same price as Paris, though, not a whole lot cheaper. For me, Rome and Venice are often more expensive than Milan. I would imagine flying into Milan and out of Paris shouldn't be more expensive than RT Milan.
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Old Sep 27th, 2014, 10:59 AM
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Actually, if you are flying from New York, you probably will save a significant load of $ by roundtripping to Milan. Mainly because Emirates entered the market with really "affordable" pricing, other airlines are priced competitively. I also personally hate flights with stops and will often try to get out of stopping if possible.mmI dropped in some dates for November of this year pre holiday in Kayak (which I have a genuine addiction to) to see what the fares looked like for the various options presented above. I've seen similar pricing all year, so the numbers looked normal to me. All for same dates, for any airport in a NYC area (JFK/EWR/LGA) to all available airports in Milan or Paris.

Into Milan out of Paris: $743 cheapest (one stop in Brussels or Toronto, return has long layover), cheapest nonstop $981 with Delta

Into Paris out of Milan: $753 cheapest (one stop in Brussels or Zurich, return has long layover), cheapest nonstop $945 with Delta

Roundtrip Milan: $680 one stop, but here's where the savings start: $691 nonstop on Emirates, $701 nonstop on American, $711 nonstop on Delta/Alitalia

Just as a control here's roundtrip Paris: $805 one stop on Turkish Airlines (stop in Istanbul, longer overall travel time), $1,072 cheapest nonstop

To be clear, if you are looking at savings on the flight and opt to go the roundtrip Milan route, your present plan is not well suited for those flights. But if you drop Paris for a separate trip and focus on Italy only, this flight actually makes a lot of sense. Those three cities are very well connected by train, so doing a Milan-Florence-Venice-Milan route or Milan-Venice-Florence-Milan route wouldn't cost you tons of extra time.

If you did focus on Italy only, open jaw into Milan out of Venice is similarly priced to the Milan-Paris route ($817 cheapest, flights range 14 - 30 including layover on return, $901 cheapest quicker duration British Airways, one stop on return leg only). Open jaw Milan- Florence/Pisa is not better either ($819 cheapest, flights range 12.5 - 29.5 hrs including layover on return, $943 shortest duration, stop in Paris).

Flying out of Milan for your return can save you significant time so you're not having to layover: $890 on Delta gives you one stop to Venice or Florence, (quick) and nonstop back from Milan.

At any rate, things will depend on where you're flying from: again this is all based on New York connections. But if you're willing to rethink your itinerary and go to Italy exclusively, the roundtrip flights to Milan become a much more attractive option. The pricing for into Venice/Florence in, Milan out is also attractive and doesn't involve huge layovers. If you really can't let go of Paris for this trip, just be prepared to pay between $150-$300 more per ticket.
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