Livorno to Florence... best option for one day
 

I arrive on a cruise ship for one day at Livorno, the port closest to Florence.
It seems that we have 3 choices for sightseeing for the day. 1) shore excursions
2) travel by train to Florence or 3) rent a car to drive to Florence and park (gasp).
Does anybody have experience with this and what was or is your preferred method.
I'm leaning toward driving because it offers more freedom of choice.

Spend your time in Lucca and Pisa for that day--by train.

What kind of freedom of choice are you thinking?
It seems the trip is constrained by time followed by cost. Once you manage both of them, is there any freedom of choice left?

If going to Florence don't even consider driving IMO - city centre largely off-limits to private vehicles and everything is in a fairly compact area. Take the train right into the city centre - parking lots are rather remote.

Several past posters have reported that after driving in Florence they received in the mail tickets that apparently are given after cameras record plate numbers of cars entering the no-car zone, which is marked but foreign tourists may not realize it - i think the car rental company tries to collect the ticket money from you or if you do not pay you may not want to go back to italy for a while?

The fabled Cinque Terre is only a short train ride away as well.

This website is invaluable. http://www.ftroute.com/ItalianTrains.htm
Our Celebrity cruise ship docked at Livorno and we disembarked at 7.01 am. Taxis were about 2 mins away to take us to the Livorno train station. It is necessary to catch a cab (20 euros)as the station is quite a distance from the port. We were on a train to Florence by 7.45 and were having coffee with the locals on via Tornabuoni by 9.30 am. Pre book your tickets to the David and the Uffizi to avoid the long lines. You have plenty of time for a wonderful day in Florence and catch the return train at about 3.30 pm so that you don't miss the boat. The overall cost is a fraction of the ship's excursion and you probably will have experienced a lot more. But read that link above first!

Thanks DownUnder... mille grazie

Trains leave Livorno hourly (:10) for Florence (6.60€) and travel time is about 1 1/2 hours. If you don't want to wait on a train, trains leave Livorno twice per hour for Pisa (4x between 7 and 8) for 1.80€ and travel time about 15-20 minutes. There are three trains per hour Pisa to Florence (5.70€) with travel time about 1 hour.

To book the Uffizi or Academia:
http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/