The Ayrshire Blog plans its holidays in Italy

Last year was so busy that I never got round to taking some of my annual holidays so this year I am determined to get away. I go regularly to Italy, usually once a year, as I have been teaching myself Italian for a couple of years now. I never thought of myself as being able to learn another language. While I was always good at science and stuff at school I usually ended up bottom of the class at French because I couldn't stand it.

Learning a language and visiting that country regularly has been an eye opener though. My Italian has come on leaps and bounds and I can now just about read serious books in Italian - I am reading a history of the Holocaust in Italian at the moment.

Anyway back to this years holidays. The first trip being planned is a week in Rome. Hopefully around April /May and I have started searching for Hotels in Rome. I've got three on my list of possible hotels in Rome at the moment; the Prime Hotel Principe which is a hotel in the centre of Rome, the Hotel Emmaus, a hotel near St peters Square in Rome, and, if I decide to go a bit more upmarket, the Boutique which is a hotel near the Trevi fountain in Rome. All of these are from the easytobook.com website which has a large selection of hotels and good information about them.

The thing with staying in hotels in Rome is that they can get fully booked quickly so it's important not to leave bookings until the last minute. Rome itself is also extremely busy during the tourist season which is why I much prefer going that bit earlier.

The good thing about living in Ayrshire is that we have RyanAir flying from Prestwick airport who do very reasonably priced flights. On that note though, RyanAir are being a bit sneeky in the way they publicise their prices. They quote a low price but then you find out that you have to pay the airport taxes and baggage fees on top of this so their flights are not always quite as cheap as they sound.