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What is the cheapest way to get to Italy?

I am a poor college student! I have a friend doing a semester abroad and I want to go visit him for spring break. I have been to a lot of travel websites and student discount travel websites. Direct flights are way to expensive, so I need a cheap flight to Europe, then a rail pass to get to Italy. What do you recommend?
I am planning on going in March.

I have found tickets for as cheap as $550 USD on student travel discount sites.

I go to school in the Southwest US. I can travel the El Paso, Denver, or Las Vegas pretty easily.

Public Comments

1. join the military & get stationed there.

2. Hitchhike
Try flying to frankfort first

3. fly into zurich on business class, and then take a taxi across the border

4. The cheapest flights from the US to Europe are in the off-season (early December, late January) and start from 600 USD roundtrip from New York to London. From the westcoast anything under 900 USD return is a good deal.

April is high season this year, since it is both springbreak time and Easter at the same time.

It does not matter how you twist it, you will be hard pressed to pay less than the above numbers. Flying to/from the big hubs helps.

It would be really helpful if you could add where you are in the US and where in Italy you need to go to. You would be getting more specific advice.

Buying a railpass is not a good idea in your situation, if you cannot afford the flight in the first place you'll have trouble coughing up the 200 USD you need to pay for the Eurail-Italy pass. Plus Eurail pass sucks big time for Italy, since in most cases it is cheaper and easier to buy tickets off the counter like a European than to mark a day off your pass.

EDIT: I looked at your profile and saw that you are from Las Cruces New Mexico. If this is true, look for flights leaving from Phoenix (PHX), Houston (IAH) or Dallas (DAL, DFW) to Europe. Destination cities in Europe should be London, Frankfurt, Rome and Paris. Once you found a fare you can live with you can then look up connecting flights to your friends' place on http://www.skyscanner.net

2nd EDIT: The above prices are total ticket prices and include taxes. Add the taxes to your 550 USD round trip and it won't look that cheap. Check out http://www.ltu.com to Dusseldorf. From Denver look into flights to or via Amsterdam with Northwest and KLM. Also post a question in "Air travel": Going from... to... in March. I took a quick look on kayak.com and the cheapest I found for some random dates in March from Denver to Rome was with American Airlines for 810 USD return including taxes. 800 USD is pretty much the standard fare to Europe (Rome, London, Frankfurt, Paris) from most airports in the US.

3rd Edit: I played around with skyscanner.net (Las Vegas to Europe) and found a fare of 780 USD, flying to Frankfurt on the 9th and returning to LAS on the 30th with Condor. Flights to a number of Italian cities from Frankfurt (FRA and HHN) would then be between 80 to 150 USD return.

5. As the above answer said, flying into London is probably the best bet. Getting around Europe by air can be done fairly cheaply too. Check out flights on Ryanair or EasyJet. They have flights all around Europe, with specials as low as $1 sometimes.

6. I flew to munhecin (germany) then drove to italy.