Frankfurt to Rome

Our first day of our recent trip began on January 9, 2017. We (my husband, who has numerous physical problems, and our son, who came to help my with his dad, and myself) had several places that we wanted to visit.
At first, we wanted to go to Assisi. Frank and I are Third Order Franciscans, and although I'd had a chance to visit Assisi, my husband had not. And as he is in his eighties and has health problems, we thought it would be now or never. Unfortunately, there was an earthquake in Umbria (the province where Assisi is located) and we were afraid there may be aftershocks and with his disabilities, we would be in serious jeopardy if anything like that happened. So, although we had told our travel agent that we wanted to go there, we contacted her as soon as possible and cancelled Italy.
"Oh no!" she said. "You can't do that. It's already paid for." Really? We hadn't had any conversation about how we'd get there or where we'd stay. As Franciscans, we'd planned to make our own accommodation arrangements, preferably with some members of our Order. But no. She'd already gone ahead and done all that. Oh  yes, she had asked for my credit card, but I really thought I'd be consulted about details before she went on a spending spree. But there were two issues I hadn't counted on. First, that all indications were that she thought the details of our trip were none of my business. Second, there was the thing about her commission.
So, with Assisi cancelled, in order to "save some of what we'd already spent" we'd have to choose another destination on some list she had. She offered Barcelona or Prague. We picked Prague.

travel agents

I don't usually use the services of travel agents, but I can tell you right now that I certainly never will in the future.
Normally, I would have simply gone on line and made my travel arrangements myself. But there were a few obstacles, the most relevant was that my laptop is old and will no longer take updates, and is therefore vulnerable. Not a good idea to do anything regarding money using it. I could have used the computer I'm using at the moment, a Surface which I bought in October 2016. But this thing has a mind of its own and often suddenly decides that it doesn't like my project, and simply moves onto something else. For example, this very blog entry. I started it once and it changed pages on me. So I had to start again. Not the sort of instrument that you want to use to arrange complicated travels.
So I went to a travel agent. The company name and the name of the agent will not be mentioned, but their actions have turned me off all travel companies and all travel agents everywhere. Some, I'm sure are reputable. Some, clearly, are not.
Rather than give all the details here in one entry, I'll just post how my recent trip went, and you can fill in the blanks for yourself.

Let me state once and for all, just for the record, that I have no problem with people earning their commissions, although that is something I mention frequently in these blog entries. I do, however, take great exception to having unnecessary additions to my journey for no observable reason other than padding the commission package.