Hi,

My friend and I will be taking the Cosmos St. Paul's to St. Peter's tour in June. We plan to have pre and post-nights. I was hoping to get any advice on how we should handle booking our pre/post nights.

The reason I ask is because through Cosmos we were quoted $200 per night ($100 each person) for 1 night in Rome at the Dei Massimi, however the rates quoted of the hotel's direct website is $160.80 per night. We are also told that if we book the pre/post nights through Cosmos they could provide airport transfer about $40-$58, but if we book hotel on our own they would not provide airport transfer, which I was told could be even more expensive.

We are tempted to just go the easy route and book everything through Cosmos so everything runs a bit more smoothly. But saving even a little bit of extra money which we could use for excursions or during the tour sounds nice too.

If anyone could provide some advice here, we would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
islandgurrl

We were booked on this tour last summer but it was cancelled and we ended up on the From Rome to London tour (the reverse of your trip). . We did not do pre and post nights, but those on the tour that did went through Cosmos and there were no complaints. While saving a few bucks sounds good, the transportation system in Rome especially is very iffy. The cabs were on strike while we were there and it was chaos. Strikes are very common with the transportation systems in Italy. The $20 you'd save on the room would be eated up very quickly trying to find transportation to the airport. Have a great trip!

I always use www.tripadvisor.com web site to find hotels and make reservations for my pre and post tour stays in Europe. There are reviews on there of hotels and actual rankings and the prices of the hotels. I have even been able to make reservations at the same hotels for a lot less money then the tour company is charging.You can also get Info regarding transfers from and to the airport by looking at these same message boards. Don't be afraid to stay at different hotels then the tours as I do it all the time.

As you can see the forum always sticks an extra . . in the links to keep them from working. Just correct the web addy and you should be able to go to the tripadvisor web site.