Four Days in Tuscany
 

Hello, we're renting a car and spending four nights/five days in Tuscany in late April. Is it better to stay in one place (e.g., Sienna) and do day trips from there or should we book different hotels for each night?

It is difficult to answer since we don't know of your interests - art, wine, scenic drives, all?
Consider this:
- Pisa for a quick photo op at the tower
- Carrara for marble tours
- San Gimignano for a 2-3 hour photo op
- Drive thru or stay in any of Chianti, Montalcino, Montalpuciano, Pienza.
- Orvieto - although Umbria, it has very interesting Ethruscan caves, St. Patricks Wells - a good break from the artsy stuff.

Better? Hard to say since we don't know you. Do you like the idea of packing up every day, checking out/in, and relocating? This can take a lot of time out of sightseeing. I usually would want at least two night in one place.

I like the idea of exploring the unfamiliar each day, but returning "home" each night. Also gives you the opportunity to get more familiar with your homebase, get to know its rhythms and local habits while seeing something new.

For me, for four nights I might stay one great location or two good ones, visiting different places each day.

I have a bit differnet opinion from Ellenem.
When you are train-ing, staying more than one night in a place make sense. But when you have the independence of a car, I genereally don't like to spend anytime to drive back to the same place where I started from, and would certainly not do it for 4 consecutive days.
I would rather spend more time enjoying the new town. You can do something like this: After breakfast, as early in the morning as possible, drive a max of 2-3 hours to reach next destination, park, unload (light) luggage at the hotel if staying there overnight, and take off to explore. Next morning, repeat.

Of course, if your starting point is a true center of the places that you are going to visit, then you have the option of coming back - but driving back to a familiar lcoation seems quite uniteresting to me.

Hi Pinky,

On my last trip, we stayed 4 nights in San Sano, in Chianti and did day trips to San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena, Greve, from there. Given that the Chianti roads are windy and take a bit longer, I would not recommend staying there if you want to home base. I felt I was spending about 2 hours each day backtracking and would have rather stayed 2 nights in Chianti and 2 nights further south.

That said, if you are staying further south, maybe around Monepulciano or Pienza, as the other poster mentioned, these towns make a better home base for day trips.

Personally, spending 4 nights in Tuscany would NOT include Pisa or Carrara. I would save those for a trip when you have more time.

Buon viaggio!

We stayed at a fabulous place in Tuscany that made a great base for travel http://www.ilcastagno.net/english/villa/villa.html

I would stay in one place--just be sure you pick the best location, and that would not be Chianti for the reason mentioned. We prefer locations within :45 of Siena and near one of the main roads in Tuscany. San Quirico is hard to beat, but NW of Siena near Colle can be good also. You cannot see all of Tuscany from one location, but you can see the best of Tuscany.

Definitely--one place. Bob is right! That way you don't waste precious time checking in and out of hotels. Take a look at Montepulciano which is a good base for daytripping. Just don't try to do too much.

http://www.janeandken.com/travelmemories.html