side trips from florence
 

is it too much to do a side trip to pisa and fiesole in one day? i am planning on going to siena on a different day.

Fiesole is so much a part of Florence, it hardly counts as a side trip, maybe 20 minutes up the hill behind Florence by city bus: you could do both in one day if you got up early, "did" just the basics of the museum and ruins of Fiesole in the am. Then you could go to Pisa in the afternoon by bus or train.You'd be tired but if you are short of time, its a plan...

Alot of tour companies run afternoon trips to Pisa that leave around 2pm and return around 6pm - which is plenty of time to do a tour of the Catherdral, the Leaning Tower and then have a look around (the very touristy) markets.

The tour gave everyone about 1 hour of free time in case you wanted to climb the tower (we didn't feel it was necessary).

From memory they aren't very expensive and the particular one that we went on was very good and informative.

The trip by coach (comfortable air conditioned) was good as they gave a lot of information regarding the towns we were passing by and useful information regarding the local produce - namely olive oil and chianti - and the trip only takes about 45 minutes or so.

topping

IMHO the best daytrip is to both Lucca and Pisa. By train, you can get to Pisa as early in the morning as you can so that to avoid the big crowds, take a look at Piazza dei Miracoli and than leave to Lucca, which happens to be right on your way back to Florence, spend the late morning and afternoon in lucca (so much more to see in lucca than in Pisa!!!) and go back to Florence. The train ticket from Florence to Pisa and from Pisa back to Florence costs 9,5 euro; no seat booking allowed or required. Just make sure that the train back to Florence goes via Lucca and not via Empoli. you do not have to buy separate tickets for Pisa-Lucca and Lucca-Firenze: with the Pisa-Firenze ticket you can get off the train in Lucca and spend up to 6 hours there.