Vacation rentals in Rome, Florence and Venice

I just returned from three weeks in Italy and stayed in wonderful apartments in Venice and Florence. Found both on vrbo.com. Highly recommend the site. You can search by neighborhood or size of apartment. The landlords were very help in pre-trip communication and were wonderful to meet in person. In Venice we were met by the rental agent at the vaporetto stop and she walked us to the apartment. Our proprietor in Florence sent very good directions from the train station and met us at the front door. I paid a deposit via PayPal and the balance in cash when we arrived. Good luck: you'll have a fantastic time.

Travel with 7 people is somewhat difficult, and you're right about looking for apartments to stay in. We try to stay in B&B's and agriturismos in Italy. Villas.com, Hotels.com, Venere.com and AirBnB.com are popular websites covering accommodations in Italy. You can also Google agriturismos to find many places to stay in Tuscany and outside the major cities.

I stayed in Florence for 3 nights in early Nov. Visit www.vrbo.com/436359 2 bed/3 baths very large apt. Plenty of room for your party. A wonderful location 10 mins walking from the train station and another 10 mins. to the Duomo.

Hi, I just back from a break in Rome and I used a company called nextaway. we stayed close to the trevi fountain and had an apartment with wifi. the landlord was nice and the overall experience was fantastic. we had to pay a reservation deposit which we did through paypal and then paid the rest in cash upon arrival.

Here's a tip I recently learned. Once you find an apartment on VRBO that you're interested in, do a Google search for a block of text from the description of the apartment. Be sure to put it in "quotes". What I've found doing this is that often these apartments are on several different websites with different rates. You can comparison shop and pick the one that works best for you. (Some sites take credit cards.)