getting around Tuscany
 

Planning a may 06 trip to Florence for 3-4 days would love to spend 3 day in Tuscany but my husband doesnt want to drive. Any ideas of a centrally located town were we could easyly do day trips from?

Why doesn't your husband want to drive?? Do you drive where you live now? You can pick up a car in either Siena or Chiusi, and never get near freeways - all small roads with not much traffic. Most towns won't let you park inside of town - so you won't be having to drive through medieval villages not designed for cars.

Siena would be centrally located, but public transit to my favorite places in Tuscany is scarce. For 3 days, you would be planning the entire day around bus schedules and you won't be able to see as much as you could if you drive. You can take a train to some of the larger towns in the area - Lucca, Pisa, Siena, Orvieto, Perugia - but you would be missing the small villages and also the beautiful countryside. From Florence, I'm sure you can take "tours" to the most popular small villages like San Gimignano, but so will everyone else. San G gets kinda too crowded for me during prime day-tripper times.

Stu Dudley

I agree with the poster above. There's no better way to get around Tuscany than driving. It's like driving in a rural area in the US. Access to all the hill towns is easy and driving through the beautiful countryside is pure bliss.

Tuscany is one of the better areas in Italy for getting around without a car. (In some regions it would be virtually impossible to male day trips without a car.) It would definitely be possible to have a very enjoyable vacation in Tuscany without driving a car, provided that you are willing to travel more slowly and to see fewer places in more depth instead of covering many in one day, and provided that you are willing to give up on making unplanned stops in the countryside (unless you are walking, which is also something more easily done in Tuscany than in some other regions). Both Florence and Siena are transportation hubs. Some towns are more easily reached from Siena, some from Florence, and some are better reached by train, others by bus.

P.S. someone above referred to San Gimignano as an "small village." It is NOT a village!!!! It's a small city. If/when you go there, or if you read about it during your planning, you will probably learn that it was an independent republic in the middle ages...far from a "village"! It's actually rather insulting to the history of these small cities and towns with a long history of independence to call them "villages." A "comune" is the smallest political unit in Italy, while a little "village" may be part of a comune.

I agree with StuDudley that driving in Tuscany is pleasant and easy. I was nervous about driving in Italy because of myths about Italian driving, but it really turned out fine. I especially enjoyed our drives from Siena to San Gimignano and other towns in Tuscany.

I would not pass up an opportunity to see this area by car.