Please bear with me...I still can't wrap my head around this stuff and my husband is no help.

We have about 73K ultimate rewards points and are trying to maximized them for our trip to Italy this summer. We have to go at a specific time because we have a wedding in Verona.

I was thinking of transferring the points to Virgin Atlantic.

We can fly from JFK - LHR for 40K + $297.80
Then we will take a domestic flight from LHR - FCO (Rome)which I found for $188 TOTAL
So going that we are at 40K miles + $485.80

Then on the way home basically the same thing but from Milan or Verona. But since we don't have enough miles we will probably pay more out of pocket to get home.

Or we can fly Norwegian from EWR - FCO Direct for $639.80 TOTAL - Which now that I'm reading what I wrote it seems like the smarter and simpler way to go.

Then I guess we can fly the Virgin Atlantic way home from Milan or Verona.

However, I have no experience with Norwegian and is there anyway we can us our 73K ultimate rewards points for this flight?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.