Florence, Italy
 

My husband and I will be starting in Rome, doing a cruise to Greece, and then going to Florence. Is it worth booking day trips to see Cinque Terre or Venice from Florence? Too much to pack into one day?
What else near Florence could we see using Florence as our base? Thinking of using airbnb.com for apartments. Does anyone have suggestions for specific apartments in Rome or Florence?

Without knowing your budget, here are links to the AirBnb apartments we used in Rome and Florence in May 2015. We left reviews on each one.

Rome - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1112762 (our review is on p. 4 at the moment)

Florence - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2403167 (our review is on p. 3)

Lee Ann

cheryl - you don't say how long you're going to have in any one place so it's difficult to judge where you'd be able to get to and how it could fit into your itinerary.

Can you give us an idea of how many nights you have arranged already, and how many nights you have to fill?

When are you making this trip? Venice is too far for a daytrip. And both Venice and the Cinque Terre are very crowded middays in high season.

But Florence does make a good base for daytrips, for example Pisa, Lucca (a charming small walled town with a path around the top of the walls), Siena (a notable cathedral, famous central plaza and a feeling of medieval times), Chianti (of wine and sceneic countryside fame). Or, for another city, Bologna, famed for its Italian cuisine and arcaded streets.

Siena is a popular day trip from Florence. You can get there via express bus. Also, you could hire a guide for a day trip through Tuscany.

I'd nix the idea of Venice or CT.

Some of my friends took the early morning train to Venice and came home on the late train and loved it. They were afraid they might not every get back so did it and had a great time.

I did a day trip to Siena, take the bus not the train.

We stayed in Florence and took a day trip to a small town to visit a friend's villa in Tuscany. We also did a cooking class in Florence which was an all day event and we made a delicious lunch/dinner! We stayed at Hotel L' Orologio. It was very nice and easy to walk to everything!

It takes two hours and five minutes to get to Venice from Florence, by direct fast train. I wouldn't consider that an unreasonable amount of time for a day trip. Both train stations (S. Maria Novella in Florence and S. Lucia in Venice) are centrally located. I think it's a reasonable daytrip. You wouldn't have time to see a whole lot, but your first ride down the Grand Canal should make the trip worth it.

It takes almost three hours, with one or two changes of train, the last one being an overcrowded train full of daytrippers, to get to the Cinque Terre. I really don't see any point in going to the Cinque Terre on a daytrip. If you could stay a few nights to enjoy the peace and quiet when the hordes of day tripper have left, and maybe do some hiking, that would be another matter.