My best friend and I are going to Florence for one week to celebrate our 50th birthdays in April. What easy day trips from Florence can you guys recommend for us? We would prefer NOT having to change buses or train multiple times to get to a destination - we'd rather spend our time walking around town and drinking wine! The tours out of Florence that I've seen on the web seem awfully expensive, so I'm think that with your help, we can do this ourselves. We are open to all your ideas and suggestions and thank you in advance!

Off the top of my head: bus to Siena or train to Pisa or train to Lucca. There are lots of possibilities. Get a good guidebook to suggest day trips and tell you about what you're seeing.

There is an American Express office in Florence that has terrific days trips. We did one to Sienna and St Giancarlo(bad spelling). The guides were great, it was easy,,relaxing and the people on the tour were fun. Best of all, no work or driving or worrying for me

Take a look at CAFTours.com We really enjoyed the Chianti tour (without dinner). The Siena/San Gim. was fun too.

Hi T,

From Florence:

Take the SITA bus to Siena - 1 hr
Take the Train to Lucca - 1:20 hr
Take the train to Bologna - 1 hr

On our last trip to Florence, we made a day trip via train to Pisa. It's a very easy trip with the trains departing almost hourly and only taking about an hour to get there. You can easily buy the train tickets at the station in Florence so no need to worry about getting them in advance.

From the train station in Pisa, I'd suggest you walk to the Leaning Tower instead of taking a bus or taxi. It will give you a nice feel of the town and the walk only takes about 15-20 minutes.

We left Florence at 9am, saw and climbed the tower, did a little shopping and we were back in Florence by 4pm.

Having made many trips to Italy, I've become a bit jaded and try to stay away from the "tourist" trips but this one was certainly worth the time!

Thanks everyone - there seems to be alot of votes for Pisa, which I had thought might not be worth the time. Ira, thanks for such specific information - I will google the SITA bus and see where else we can go using buses rather than booking the more expensive tours. Since you guys are the experts, what area is best for us to stay in that is close to bus/train transportation out of the city?

Last summer I did a day trip to Pisa/Lucca. Everything Michael said above is correct. Very easy trip. Except that on the way back I took the train to Lucca (less than half hour from Pisa) and spent the afternoon there. Lucca is a much more beautiful town than Pisa and I spent the majority of my time there. Then the train from Lucca back to Florence is still only about an hour.

Another day I took the bus to Siena and that is also very easy and enjoyable. The bus station (the one with buses to Siena, there are other bus stations) is about a half block from the train station in Florence. If you are standing in FRONT of the train station, go to your right, cross the street and it's a few doors down that block. Siena is wonderful and you could easily spend the entire day there.

Both these trips are very inexpensive (approximately 5-6€ per person each way) so don't waste money on a tour. Do it yourself and you can spend as little or as much time as you want. Both the trains and the buses run every hour almost and no need to buy tickets ahead of time.

If I could only do one of those day trips it would have been to Siena.

Hi T,

>...what area is best for us to stay in that is close to bus/train transportation out of the city? <

For clean, inexpensive, basic accomodations in a safe nefighborhood near the train station I can highly recommend the B&B Peterson.

www.bedinitaly.it