Interesting. Three votes for London so far, and none for Italy. I'd have thought the history geeks in the audience would want me to see Rome and Pompeii, at least...

I'm still thinking, and don't worry, I'm taking all your advice into consideration. One thing I learned from my Paris-Venice trip was that I don't really like staying in hostels. I like hotels where I have my own bathroom facilities that are cleaned regularly, and I like having my own room. Unfortunately, I don't really have the money for that at this point in my life... the Venice hotel was really nice, but it was about two-thirds of the cost of my entire trip. So maybe I should wait, and do Florence, Rome, and Naples when I'm a grown-up with a grown-up job.

On the other hand, London is a really expensive city. It might actually be a better use of my money (and I'm talking strictly cash here, not accommodations, etc.) to go eat in Italy where food is tasty and cheap. Plus, some of the stuff I want to see here in England will have admission charges and travel costs. I'd really like to get up to York to see the historic city and the cathedral, and I want to go to Bath and Stonehenge, and I want to go to Birmingham to visit Cadbury World (yes, I know). So it might not actually be saving me any money to stay here.

What I'm going to do is first of all, quit braindropping about it, and second of all, go to the travel agency and find out how much the Italy trip would cost. I'll decide from there, because after all, I still have Christmas presents to buy...