The thrill of the chase

Back in November we decided on Rome for our honeymoon. But those well intentioned thoughts quickly hit a brick wall with the realization that the dollar is as weak as Estelle Getty on a 3 day fast and international flight costs that go into the thousands of dollars. Undaunted and without a skymile to my name I ploughed forward. Our quest to spend our honeymoon in the company of Popes, Ceasars, and Gypsies was to be an uphill battle.

I've literally spent the last 3 months poring over countless travel search engines. I've looked at every possible scenario and every viable date. Some of the interesting insights:

• Affordable travel to Europe, particularly Rome, needs to be done in March at the latest. Between April and September the prices go up around 50%. These high prices carry on through Labor Day.


• Consider traveling to another cheaper city in Europe and then using a cheap regional carrier like Ryannair. In our case we will be flying through Frankfurt. Can you say Schznitzel?


• The best site for international travel that we found was http://www.vayama.com/. Easy to use, straight forward, transparent, and legitimate.

All in all we came away with two tickets to Rome for under a grand. My patience and perservanace paid off. That is quite a feat in this day and age of increase fuel taxes and ever increasing airline fees.

With this big initial road block out of our way we can now focus our attentions to Gelato, Trevi, David, and St Peter.