I have used Eagle for a few PCBs. The autorouter works okay for small boards or if you don't care about having lots of vias. You can usually do better manually. I have also done a few boards in AutoCad- but I would not recommend it. It makes it so much faster when you have a library of components to select from.
As for making the PCBs, I would highly recommend manufacturing them yourself. All you need to do is get some special toner transfer paper (high gloss photo paper will work), an iron, a copper clad board, and ferric chloride or other etching solution. You print the mirror image of your design onto the toner transfer paper in a laser printer and iron it onto the board. The plastic in the toner sticks to the copper. Then you submerge your board in the etching solution and everything that isn't covered with toner will be etched away. I have made about 20 PCBs with this method and it works very well. The resulting traces aren't as clean as a professionally made board, but they are fine for most applications. I have used this successfully with 80 pin TQFPs (like the PIC in the robot controller) and other surface mount components. You can get boards and etching solution from Radioshack or other sources. A small to medium size board can be completed in just a few hours and it is pretty fun. A pretty good website describing this method is:
http://www.fullnet.com/~tomg/gooteepc.htm
-Ken