Started planning for my second trip to Europe today! A few weeks ago I picked up Frommers Italy 2006, after looking though it I’m still quite convinced that I want to cover Rome, Florence and Venice on this trip. Those three cities are just so beautiful and full of sights and sounds. Since Jae has never been to Europe before I think these three cities will be a great introduction :).

Today I was busy looking for air fare, financially this is the biggest chunk. After going through a few sites, i was shocked at how expensive it is!! Granted I’m looking at late May, (hoping to take advantage of Memorial day) which is the start of the summer season to Europe, so fares would be high. After comparing a few places, it seems like American Airlines had the best prices.

Once I got the prices for our ‘ideal’ travel time I started working backwards away from the peak season. Strangly, I couldn’t find any fares for the 17th to the 26 of March. I looked at a few prices with departure on Fridays, Saturdays, and arrivals on Sundays and Mondays. It seems like there is no difference between leaving on a Friday or Saturday, but about $100 more between coming back Sunday than Monday. I settled for March 25 to April 3rd which was about 40% less than the price in May.

Destination-wise I knew I wanted to fly into Rome, and was considering flying out of Rome, because I thought it would be cheaper. But the trip from Venice to Rome would take 5 hours by train. Flying out from Venice would only be around $100 more. Saving 5 hours and a train ticket on such a short trip seems like a no brainer to me, so I opted for that.

In the end today’s research got me tix from San Diego to Rome and Venice to San Diego for a bit under $600. Not bad for a few hour’s work. I think I’ll keep looking in the next few days and see if I could do better.