Last spring, my 72-year-old mother decided to quit worrying about the war, SARS and terrorism, and forge ahead with her dream to see Italy.

"If I wait until every single thing in life is perfect, I'll never go," said Mom, who lives in the tiny western Kansas town of Grinnell.

And so we – her five daughters – began our quest to plan Mom's Perfect Trip.

It was the least we could do. Carol Mahr Karlin, a former art major at Kansas State University, had always balanced her love of European history and art with her duties as a farmer's wife and mother of five. Widowed in 1991, Mom had braved the six-hour drive east on Interstate 70 countless times in her blue Lincoln to help us "girls" cope with moving, childbirth, illnesses and other challenges.

True to her generous nature, Mom had invited her children along: Janelle Carrigan, a school nurse in Atchison, Kan; Julie Walker, an Overland Park speech pathologist; Christy Mense, a farm manager in Grinnell; Tricia Karlin, a Lawrence librarian; and me, Cathy Zahner, a Prairie Village homemaker and free-lance writer.

The Road to Italy

One Sunday afternoon in April, the four of us who live in eastern Kansas and Mom gathered in my home to begin planning. Secretly, each of us hoped someone else would step forth with a brilliant itinerary.

"Ummm ... what all is in Italy, anyway?" I remember asking.

Tricia, the ever-resourceful librarian, was the best prepared. She'd brought two guidebooks – Rick Steves' Italy 2003 (Avalon Travel, $18.95) and Frommer's Italy 2003 (Wiley Publishing, $21.99) – and brochures from two large bus-tour companies. I'd snapped up a copy of the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Italy (Dorling Kindersley, $30), plus computer printouts from an intriguing travel agency I'd found on the Internet.
The agency, called Road to Italy, advertised "independent, custom tours."

But paging through these materials left us even more overwhelmed. There was so much to see: The Sistine Chapel! The ruins of Pompeii! The canals of Venice!

"Should we just focus on the classic art and cathedral stuff?" we wondered. "Or does anyone want to spend a day on the beaches of Cinque Terre? We want to see Tuscany, too, don't we?"

We turned to the bus tour brochures. Joining one of these tours would be the easy way to see Italy. We wouldn't have to worry about hotels or anything; just show up on time to catch the bus.

"It would be easy on Mom," we agreed.

"I don't care," Mom said. "It's OK with me whatever you want to do."

Tricia, however, seemed hesitant, and admitted that she had always hated those big, diesel-belching motor coaches used by many tour companies.

"I'm just not crazy about roaring around the quaint roads of Italy on a giant bus," she said. "It's just so – touristy."

"True," the rest of us agreed. Although there was no denying that we were going to be tourists, did we have to be such obvious tourists?

"One problem with being on a group schedule is, sometimes they give you a lot of time to see something you don't really want to see, when you'd really rather be spending that time seeing something else," said Janelle.

"Yeah," Julie added. "What if we see a really neat outdoor cafe and we want to just stop, sip a cup of coffee and enjoy the atmosphere?"

The tide was definitely turning against an organized tour.

We knew we could travel on our own. Tricia, Julie, Mom and I had done it four years ago, renting a car and driving through Ireland for 10 days.

We had loved the flexibility and privacy. On the other hand, every night we'd had to pore over maps and guidebooks, deciding what to see the next day, where we would be and stay the next night. It had been a wonderful trip, but not all that restful.

At least Ireland had been an English-speaking country. Could we manage the traffic, road signs, maps and hotels in Italian, which none of us spoke?

"Does anyone seriously have the time to research all this?" Tricia asked.

We all grimaced; no one volunteered.

Stymied, we turned back to the "independent tour" idea and the Road to Italy.

According to the company's Web site, independent tours seemed to offer the best of both worlds for us: private travel with a custom itinerary. We could travel as a private group and choose what we wanted to see in each city.

All the annoying details – hotel rooms, train tickets, guided tours and transportation – would be pre-arranged by the tour company. It could even arrange private cooking lessons, wine tastings and other activities according to our interests.

"Sounds great, but how expensive is it?" Tricia asked. We knew Mom, who still mows her own lawn and makes piecrust from scratch, would not want to waste money on pretentious extravagances.

We compared the itineraries of the bus tours with a sample independent tour from
Road to Italy, a division of the Total Travel Service agency in Toronto.

Surprisingly, the cost of a 10-day independent tour, split among the six of us, was about $1,500 per person – including hotels, all transportation in Italy, tours and admission to some sights – only slightly more than a group tour. Most meals and airfare were extra.

For better or worse, after our four-hour planning session, we agreed to take the Road to Italy.