[chachacha]

i am a big fan of organized bus tours but if you decide to rent a car, read the small print...some companies in germany do not let you take their car to italy. you may have to drop one off and rerent over the border...a friend and i drove around italy two years ago and i found it very stressful...and i speak italian! i looked all over a sicilian city for a lovely church i had seen so easily on a bus tour years before and never did find it. however, we did make one lovely discovery which we might have missed on a tour. i found the signs very small and so many on a pole that you could not read them quickly enough. some of the places we had rented ahead of time were less than idyllic...but however you decide to go, any little aggravations are soon forgotten and the lovely memories of the whole experience take precedence. one tour director from Go Ahead Vacations, which i have used many times, saved us during an Alitalia strike and got us on a flight to canada while others were waiting three days at the airport to get on a flight...so there are pros and cons but my personal preference is the escorted bus tour.