Is 5 days too long to stay in Florence? We had planned to take the train to Seina one day and rent a car to see the hill towns of Tuscany another day- which would leave 3 days in Florence itself. My other option would be to stay in Tuscany for 2 nights and Florence then for 3 nights. Which would be the bettter plan?

Others will disagree with me, but Florence is not near the top of my list of favorite cities. In my opinion two nights is plenty there, unless you want to spend lots and lots of time in museums. In fact we went with friends on a limited schedule and arrived early in the morning by train from Rome, spent all afternoon, one night and the next morning seeing the Accademia, the duomo, and St. Croce, crossing the Ponte Vecchio, and visiting the straw market, then heading off to Venice. They aren't major museum people and we had been to Florence before. They felt that was plenty of time.

Personally I'd rather get some feel for Tuscany by staying in one of the hill towns, perhaps San Gimagnano, for a couple nights, or head south to the "real" Tuscany and stay a night or two in Montepulciano or Pienza.

That sounds like a good suggestion. Does anyone have a suggestion on where to stay and at what hotel. We need something air conditioned because we will be there in June; but we would also like the place we stay at to have the charm of the area.

Having spent a good deal of time in Florence, I'll offer another opinion:
Florence, is to me, the biggest small city I've ever encountered. The cultural, business, artistic center of Italy for a very very long time, Florence has treasures that visit after visit can't exhaust.

Food? Art? Shopping? History? Churches? Museums? 5 days and a daytrip or two will hardly scratch the surface.

I spent a week in Florence and wasn't bored yet. I'm not a huge museum person but there were a host of things to keep me busy. I visited Siena and San G. for a day and toured wineries another day, but that was not nearly enough to scratch the surface of Tuscany.

For hotel suggestions, type <Florence Hotels> (without the little arrow thingies) into the search field at the top of your page. A zillion messages from the archives will appear on the left-hand side of the page.

Hi wsz,

We spent 6 days in Florence and enjoyed them all.

A day trip to Siena is a good idea. I prefer the bus to the train.

Rather than an expensive car rental, you could train to Lucca (1 hr), Chianti (1:30 hr), Montepulciano (2 hr) or Bologna (1 hr).

<<Is 5 days too long to stay in Florence?>>

Definitely not.

<<My other option would be to stay in Tuscany for 2 nights and Florence then for 3 nights. Which would be the bettter plan?>>

It depends on what interests you and what you want to do. By the way, Florence IS in Tuscany.

Five days is definitely not too long to stay in Florence, even if you don't do day trips. We return to Florence nearly every time we go to Italy. However, in June, you might want to spend 3 days in Florence then rent a car to see the countryside for the other 2 days. IMO, renting a car for one day wouldn't really be worth it as renting the car and getting out of town and then returning it uses up a lot of time.

I stayed 3 nights and found that at the most one more would have been good. We took a bus tour through Tuscany to 2 hilltowns including Siena (this took one full day). I love escorted bus tours, so EASY and a local guide at Siena gave us a tour of several areas including the cathedral and gave us history/info we wouldn't have gotten on our own, plus we had more than enough time on our own at each stop. Also went to Fiesole for dinner one night. Florence is very small.