Hi - and first of all a big thanks you to all who helped me plan, especially Ira who came up with the phone no for reserving the uffizi - I'm pretty sure that if we'd just turned up and seen the queue, we wouldn't have bothered.

Haven't got time to post it all now, but I'll do the first day and see how it goes.

Day 1.
Early morning flight means we've spent the night in a b&b near the airport. [if any one from the UK who needs a b&b or airport parking near Bristol, I can highly recommend this place - it's "The Old Chaff Mill"]. Still have to get up at about 5am and even then, the queues to check in and get through security are horrendous. It's half- term, stupid!! WE just make it to the gate before they close it, only to spend 15 minutes on the bus while they seemingly look for a driver.
As often happens with esyjet, we take off late but arrive on time, so at just after 10 am italian time, we are landing in Pisa, where it is already 10 degrees C warmer than the UK. We had planned to get the train from Pisa airport straight through to Florence, but stupidly, i have read on the plane in the easyjet magazine [which should carruy a government health warning] that you can catch a coach that takes you straight to the main Station in Florence, which would mean less of a wait for us as we have over an hour to wait for the next train. So we buy our tickets for the coach from the information office where they are advertised, and join the queue outside.
We begin to feel a bit concerned as an ever growing number of people join his queue, and there is only one coach, due to leave at 11am, and there are a lot of people. but eventually the driver and the ticket inspector turn up, we put our luhggage on, and stand by the door, looking expectant. WE are slightly surprised that other people have priority, and it seems as if sone tickets are better than others. Eventually, there are just 7 of us left and 3 seats. and there are four in our party. THe inspector explains that they give priority to passsengers who buy from the coach company desk rather than the information desk!!!!
So we take our luggage off the coach [wanting to scream with frustration, but knowing that the train goes in 15 minutes time], lug it back into the airport, get a refund and the train tickets from the same girl at information who so kindly sold us the coach tickets [at least they didn't make us join the train ticket queue] and dash for the train which of course is at the extreme other end of the airport.
We actually made it with 5 minutes to spare, and i will draw a veil over the family discussion we had about who was responsible for this slight local difficulty, as you will have no problem imagining it for yourselves.

The train was pretty crowded, and the journey not very exciting, but we had seats [an advantage over the coach] and it got to florence pretty much on time. It was relatively easy to locate the taxi-rank, and my italian, though poor, was enough to communicate the addresss of our apartment, which turned out to be just around the corner from the accademia.

more later - if you're interested. Let me know what aspects would interest you most, and I'll try to oblige.

Thanks Ann, I'll wait expectantly for the next post. We'll be in Florence in January, flying Easyjet too - but from Pisa to Paris. How did you manage with your luggage on the train - could you keep it with you or did you have to store it in another area - if so, did you chain it or something to the train, so no one could run off with it? Thanks for the advice about buying the coach tickets - how ridiculous is that!

Dear Amanda,
Thanks for the response - sometimes trip reports don't get read at all, which is a bit frustrating.
To answer your specific enquiries, there are luggage racks overhead, but they will only take the sort of bag you could get in the aircraft overhead locker, or perhaps slightly larger. We were travelling with a largish suitcase, and two squashy roller bags, which were too big to get into the train compartment, so we just left them by the door, which is what everyone else did. I suppose that it is possible in theory that someone would walk off with them, but higly unlikely.
AS for the coach business, the driver told us that the information office should not be selling the tickets at all - which begs the question as to how they had official printed tickets with the coach company details on them. The information office were outraged by this suggestion - so we had the comfort ? of knowing that we had created dissention in the ranks!

Hi Ann,

Very interesting start to your trip. Looking forward to more.

Glad that my suggestion re the Uffizi was helpful.

Hi Ann,

I am very interested in your report. Thanks for taking the time to post. We are spending 16 nights in Italy in June and have rented an apartment in Florence for 1 week. Look forward to hearing more about your trip!

Ah, the joys of travel...the surprises of travel...someone sells you a real ticket, but then you hear that the place it's being sold shouldn't be selling it...your great plan turns into a rush to follow Plan B. It takes such patience, doesn't it?

thanks for the feedback, folks. slightly surprised to find it, as my browser is telling me I've had 0 responses to my message. This has happened to me a couple of times now. Anyone else have this problem?
can't post anything more "proper" now, as I've got real work to do but I'll try to get back to you soon, before the memories fade.
Ann

Trip report - Day 1 [cont]
The apartment

We booked through B & B in Florence - at the time that I was looking, approx 2 months in advance of the trip, there was not much choice of two bed-roomed apartments, required because of our kids being 19 & 15 and girl and boy respectively. B&B etc. were by far the cheapest, with the best choice. WE paid E700 for 5 nights, a saving of at least E300 on the E100 per night per room I had budgeted for. also no deposit was required.
I had e-mailed the agent to say that we'd be arriving at about lunch-time, fully expecting just to be able to leave our luggage while the cleaner finished. so we were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find that it was all ready for us. we were shown round by the agent/manager [and cleaner too, I think] and found that it was pretty much as advertised, with very big rooms, lofty ceilings, and a large terrace. It was by no means luxurious, the TV had very poor reception [we weren't planning on watching much] but it was clean, very quiet, and a good deal for the price, IMO.
After dumping our bags and changing into lighter clothes [the temperature was way hotter than at home in the UK] we grabbed a map, and made for the town and lunch. AS i had done a bit of homework, i had worked out that if we went straight down the via Cavour [the apartment was on via alfani, just round the corner from the accademia] we would hit the Duomo. however, DH knew better, and we went a most circuitous route, to end up - guess where - at the Duomo. When I saw it, I felt the same sense of disappointment that I'd had when DH and visited Florence 24 years ago, that such a wonderful building has been so hemmed in by so many others, so there is no real space from which to admire it. However, I can't do anything about that, and by then DS and DD were complaining mightily about being hungry, so we grabbed a table under and umbrella at the first available restaurant, and consumed the first of a number of fairly unmemorable meals. I personally would not go to Florence to eat, but perhaps we just didn't find the right places/do enough research/pay enough.
Anyway, the pizza and pasta hit the right spots, the beer and wine were ok, and we set off for the Duomo, Baptistry and campanile, where I gave into the pleas of the rest of the party to climb it with them. [I have a thing about losing my footing on a step and falling all the way back down again.]
I would certainly say that it was worth the climb for the views and the air quality - you certainly need it when you get there. DS amused himself by counting the steps - 409 according to him, 411 officially, but was strangely reticent to take up my suggestion that he do it all again to check. we could see people at the top of the duomo dome [entrance closed for some reason when we tried to get in] and we decided to climb it another day [we never did, and DS is still grumbling about it].
Then we decided to wander down to the Ponte Vecchio, which was much busier than I remembered. On the way we were sussing out gelateria, and discovered how much more expensive they were than they had been in Rome [Easter 2006] - E2.50 for a small cone as opposed to E1 or less. This was an unpleasant shock!
The rest of the day was spent wandering the streets, [i love the little specialist shops, and DD loves the markets, though we neither of us bought much as the other two most definitely do not] going back to the apartment, unpacking, and eating - again nothing special, as we were quite full from lunchtime. Finally bed, which turned out to be quite comfy.

Day 2 - a statue and the gardens.

Day 2 - a statue and gardens

Traditionally, we try not to organise too much for our first day, preferring to take our time and get our bearings. so, after a long and tiring day the day before, we let the kids sleep late [9am!] and ordered breakfast at the snack bar opposite our building. As well as bread, they had pastries, fruit juices, and take away coffee - no hot chocolate on monday morning, worst luck.

Then it was off into town, stopping first at the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi on via cavour, where we were intrigued by posters of a huge bronze statue. As well as a fascinating temporary exhibition about this greek statue dredged up from the med and painstakingly restored, there was a magnificently frescoed chapel on the first florr, and an exhibition of roman heads in the basement. Two rooms of presentations in italian and english about the recovery of the statue culminated [once we found it; no notices or signs at all] in a plain white room with luminous walls, simply containing the restored statue. Wow!
It was truly stunning and beautifully staged. Called the apoxyomenos [meaning he who is scraping the dirt off himself after performing his athletic exercise]it is made of copper and stands about 6-8 feet high. The exhibition is on til January, and well worth a look. Can't remember how much it cost, but DS and DD got in for nothing/cheap being young EC citizens.
THe chapel was interesting, but no more than that.

Then it was on into the town, where I'd decided we should take in San Lorenzo before lunch. Frankly, the most memorable part was my DH being made to done a sarong, in order to avoid his knees being offensive in the lord's sight! [he'd worn shorts - and a very respectable pair at that]. Definitely not worth E6 each. [and no discounts]. WE tried to get our money's worth by visiting the [free] library next door, designed largely by Michelangelo, but it's shut for renovation.

By this time, the young were clammering for lunch, but I urged them on, suggesting that it would be better to look for food once we had crossed over the arno, the afternoon plan being to visit the Boboli gardens. [which we had missed on our trip 24 years before and I'd always wanted to see].

Half an hour later, we had fought our way across the ponte vecchio, and plunged our way into the teeming masses on the other side, just to find that we couldn't locate the entrance to the gardens at all!
Past by the pitti palace, and fearing mutiny, we decided to stop for lunch and finally found a restaurant back up near the bridge [where we though the entrance might be] that fulfilled our criteria [not empty, not too busy, in the shade, and a menu in Italian, and sat down.
I should explain here that in theory, we [adults] would prefer to have a snack lunch to save money and increase sightseeing time. On the other hand, they [kids] prefer to sit down and eat a proper lunch [by which they mean at least one course of pasta or pizza as a minimum, plus drinks, bread, etc.] Almost invariably, we allow the kids to win out as a qid pro quo for deigning to come on holiday with us! [also, our DS thoroughly dislikes virtually anything that can normally be found in a sandwich or role, and until recently, wouldn't eat pizza either, so that reduces the choice of food on the hoof somewhat]. And as a bonus, we have found that days spent in this way mean that we actually see more as we are more rested in the afternoons. On the flip side, it is undoubtedly more expensive, though we tend to eat less in the evenings, which saves a bit.

So, duly fed and watered [nice pasta and salads] we asked the waiter how to get to the gardens, and were directed back in the way we'd just come, back down past the pitti palace again!

So back we went, and eventually the gates hove in view, and even at E8 each, we were not going to be put off after all this effort. Regrettably, the gardens were pretty disappointing, and much in need of renovation. plus we later discovered that we'd picked up a number of nasty insect bites!

So it was back into town through the crowds again, relieved by very good gelati at only E1 each, [purchased at the wrong side of the ponte st. Trinita] which cheered us all up a lot, and back to the apartment and put our feet up with a cup of tea. [tea-bags brought with us for the purpose].

tomorrow - how not to get into the uffizi, even with reservations!