Seven days in China for under $900, flight included

I am delighted to tell you about a deal I may snap up myself: China Spree‘s 7 Day China Express — Beijing Free-style Travel (2010) will take you to Beijing from San Francisco and put you up at a four star hotel for $588 ($988 from New York). They’re even throwing in free breakfasts.

The hotel is The Beijing Huabin, which is located just a ten minute walk from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, opposite the National Grand Theater, and also near the Wangfujing shopping area. Your stay will be five nights (the sixth is lost in travel) in a room with all the usual accoutrement including an LCD TV and broadband internet. There are tours available to the Summer Palace, the Great Wall of China and the Temple of Heaven at an additional cost, or you can make your way there yourself and explore on your own with the help of a guidebook (or even just the internet). If there’s somewhere else you’d like to visit, China Spree can help you make arrangements.

The catch? Departure taxes and fuel surcharges ($299 from SFO, $307 from JFK), and the low, low prices only apply to trips in December and January — after that, they climb, but you can still find a pretty great deal.

So, from SFO in January, you can go to China for seven days for $887. Not. Bad. Visit the website or call 866-652-5656 to book.

To Italy and back for under $800

Every once in awhile I catch wind of a deal so good, I think I might just take advantage of it myself — this is one of those deals.

It seems like it costs $800 just to breathe lately, but you can actually get to Italy and back for well under that! The deal is from TourCrafters, and for just $696, you can get airfare from New York on Alitalia — including fuel surcharges — and four nights in a three-star hotel (“The Florence Special”). For $799, you can stay in the four-star Hotel Kraft.

Other super cheap TourCrafters specials to Italy include Rome from $709 and glorious Venice from $734. The packages are for trips between November and the end of March and don’t include taxes, but those prices are pretty fantastic. And they also include full buffet breakfasts. Know what else is fantastic? Italy.

The temperature in Italy is in the 60s (Fahrenheit) during those months, which means while you probably won’t be baking in the sun, you’ll have perfect weather for sight-seeing, museums, and eating copious amounts of pasta.

And that, my friends, is better than breathing. Reservations must be made by October 30: 1-800-482-5995.