crimson12

One thing you might want to keep in mind, given that your plans are subject to unexpected change, is that you often pay a fee (around $75-$150) for canceling or even changing an award ticket, unless you have some elite status. (I went for Platinum status with Delta solely so I could avoid award ticket change fees.)

There are lots of "How do I get started?" posts on here, so I suggest you start with a few of those to get a sense of what's out there. Earlier posters have talked about the different airlines and alliances. You'll see also that some award tickets charge high fees--e.g., British Airways. Others don't (AA), but are much harder to find availability on.

Since you are just starting out, you might consider flying economy to Rome for your current trip. I just did a quick search on united.com, and there's actually pretty good economy award inventory in August and September 2013. You'd pay 60k for the roundtrip, probably on Air Canada (AC). In the meantime, you can start building up your point balances for a bigger award.

If you do have Ultimate Reward points, you can probably transfer to UA and do the trip in business, flying either AC or UA. The problem is that I see business class on the transatlantic (TATL) sector but economy from LAX-EWR (if you fly UA) or LAX-YYZ(Toronto) if you fly AC. I didn't look very hard, though, so there may be more space open. Of course, this just gets you to Europe in a premium cabin, not one of the super-fancy first class cabins (EY, CX, etc.) One example I found is:

You should also be able to add a "free oneway" to this trip. See here: http://milevalue.com/master-thread-f...united-awards/