We've been traveling a lot in the past few years. For overseas trips, we've been taking organized tours...the primary reasons for that are 1) so hubby can see everything too, which he wouldn't be able to if he was driving; 2) so we never have to worry about parking, which is a huge problem in many European cities; and 3) so we get to see all the best sites/museums/etc...because if we had to pay for each one, we'd never go to any of them, because hubby hates paying for stuff (but when it's included in the overall tour price, he doesn't notice it). We've really enjoyed every tour we've been on so far. What I like about the tours is that they give you an overview, and then if there are things you want to go back and see more of, you know which ones to pick, and know a bit more about getting around. For example, we'd both like to go back and spend some time just site-seeing around Rome. It was included in our tour of Italy, but we didn't see enough, so that's one place we'd enjoy going back to and meandering about on our own.

We have a wonderful travel agent in Quebec City that we use...even though we live in Ottawa (a four-hour drive away). Her prices are the best and we get to customize everything to the way we want it, which isn't always easy to do with the online sites.

We HAVE booked hotels online, using Expedia, Travelocity, etc. The one problem we've encountered with using online sites is that once you're in the hotel and realize you don't like it, you're stuck, because you've paid Expedia, not the hotel, and the hotel will not refund your money or accept cancellations for subsequent nights. However, having said that, you have to watch. We recently booked a hotel in southern Ontario...if we had booked directly with the hotel, it would have been non-refundable as soon as we paid for it (which was immediately upon booking). So, since we weren't sure of our plans, we booked through Expedia which allowed us to cancel right up until 6pm the night before. You have to be careful to read the terms of your reservation.

The other thing we watch for are freebies, like Wi-fi, free breakfast, newspapers, etc.

We use Trip Advisor all the time to check reviews of hotels, tour groups, restaurants, general info on any city, etc. In our experience it's the best collection and most reliable place to find the most honest, word-of-mouth reviews. We've stayed in places which had some bad reviews and had wonderful experiences though, so it's not always an accurate accounting of a place. But you go by the averages...if lots of people say the same basic thing, you can pretty much be sure that that's the way it is.

When we're traveling overseas to someplace we've never been before, we never "wing" it, though we would definitely do that on a subsequent visit. Hotels can be very expensive and hard to come by in peak season, and when you have a different language to contend with, it's just easier to have the travel agent make the arrangements for that first visit.

I have to say, we love tours. We're heading out for a 3-week organized tour of China soon, and are very impressed with the organization and itinerary - and the price! It was cheaper to go to China (everything, including all meals, tips and even internal domestic flights) for 3 weeks than it was to go on the 10-day tour to Europe that we'd had our eye on. We heard of that one by word-of-mouth.