We are 3 couples in our mid thirties with plans to rent a vacation property in Tuscany for the last week in May. I've narrowed the options down to three locations and am hoping for some feedback in terms of where we will be versus what we hope to do/see in the area. We will have a rental car.

Options:
Outside Lucca
Outside Siena
Inside San Gimignano

On the to do list:
Cooking class
Two days of wine tasting with a guide/driver (I've pulled several suggestions from this board already, so thank you!)
Day trip to Cinque Terre
Pisa?

Obviously, the CT is closer to Lucca, but would the area be doable as a day trip from San Gim or Siena?

Any feedback about these areas in terms of one is "better" than the other? We enjoy wine and food and are looking forward to exploring some of the hill towns...so pretty much the same things as everyone else traveling to Tuscany!

Anything else I should add to the to-do list??

San Gimignano is a car nightmare. The traffic jam to get in and out is horrible and you sometimes have to queue for parking for long periods, this will certainly put a big damper to using it as a base.

We stayed overnight in San G, drove to Pisa in the early AM (also a challenge due to the traffic) visited, turned in the car and trained into Vernazza (CT)around 5:00PM. It is certainly doable but required significant effort.

Have you considered Pienza, we absolutely loved our stay there. Lovely views, great food and real easy in/out with the car.

We did not have the same "nightmarish" experience with a car in San Gimignano as marigross. On our arrival, we did drive through town to our hotel to drop off our luggage. We had a detailed map from our hotel. It was not any more difficult than arriving at any unfamiliar destination. After that, we parked in P3, a large public parking lot (fee) just outside the town's walls. It was an easy walk back to the hotel. We stayed for 4 nights last September.

It seemed as if we were leaving for the day or returning in the late afternoon, just as day trippers were coming/going! So, we did not find the traffic so bad. Perhaps it is different mid-day.

Staying in San Gimignano afforded us the opportunity to enjoy this charming town early in the morning & at night ... after all the day trippers had left!!! It was magical!

We also stayed in Pienza on the same trip! We loved Pienza, too! It is close to Montalcino & Montepulciano for wine tasting opportunities.

Good luck with your planning!

I would stay south of Siena, but how important is the CT to you? Life is a compromise and Tuscany is large.

thanks all for the responses!

The CT is not technically important to me at all, but it is on the top of my friend's list. I have sent her a message indicating all the driving required if we stay near Lucca (and a link to michelin.com!).

Personally, I'd prefer to be in southern Tuscany so trips to Umbria are also feasible.

Alternatively, we could I guess skip the rental (which requires 7 nights) and stay in hotels which would allow us to do 2 nights CT and maybe 3 nights southern Tuscany and 3 nights Umbria...but I like the idea of not having to pack and unpack so often.

Decisions...

Having done all of Tuscany by daytrips from rather few homebases, I can assure you that driving is time-consuming there. Easy, but time-consuming: either it's slow driving on scenic but winding side roads. Or there is heavy car traffic (thinking of northern Tuscany, roughly between Arezzo and Pisa). So don't even think of a daytrip from either S. Gimignano or (even worse!) Siena to the Cinque Terre. You'd perhaps manage to get forth and back in one day, but without even getting out of your car in any of the Cinque Terre.
As far as hilltowns, you should obviously base yourself in S. Gimignano or Siena. As far as wine, Siena. As far as food, Lucca (which has a great cuisine, far superior to anywhere in southern Tuscany, and completely different). Decisions, as you said...

Lucca is out on a limb and a long way from South of Siena.

Pienza is a very good bet with a huge amount of stunning rentals.

San Gim as a base is not a strange idea as it sounds. Go for days trips whilst the cruise ship tours mob the place during the day. By the time you are back they have gone and you have one very beautiful town to yourself.

Siena is a big town and you miss a lot of the essence of the Tuscan country side by basing yourself here.

Personally, I'd skip the villa rental and pick several home bases - it will reduce your travel time. I'm not sure how many nights you'll have - maybe 3 nights Cinque Terre, and 4 nights in southern Tuscany?

I really like staying IN San Gimignano, for the "pro" reasons mentioned above; we've done that several times. We would leave in the morning and drive around, arriving back in San G. in the evening, as the day tourists were leaving. We didn't find it difficult to find a place to park in the public lots outside the walls. And then, we didn't have to drive to dinner, so we could both drink wine with dinner, and walk home afterward. There are several very good restaurants in San Gimignano - my favoriate is Dorando.

After nearly a dozen trips to Tuscany (including Lucca and Siena), we finally bought an apartment to serve as our base in the area. The spot we picked is just south of Pienza, in the Val D'Orcia, which has been favorably mentioned in this thread several times. There are many reasons why. From this area it is possible to be in Siena, Orvieto, Montalcino, Cortona, Arezzo, and dozens of smaller towns in a very short time. We thought hard before we plunked our money down on a place. The Pienza area is hard to beat.

One of the advantages picking the area of Lucca for a base with three couples and one rental car is that the area is well served by trains should some people want an independent option.

The down side is that if you want the almost-gardened farmland scenery of the val d'Orcia, you have to go to the val d'Orcia. But that doesn't mean there isn't beautiful scenery to be seen from the villas in the hills near Lucca. It's just wilder. And the hilltowns, like Barga and San Gimignano, are more dramatic:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filearga_Alps.jpg

http://www.luccavillas.com/

http://www.rentvillas.com/Browse.aspx?NavToMap=8716

http://www.tenutamariateresa.it/aprilia.html

http://www.tuscany-rental.com/members_only/barga.htm

http://casamarchettituscany.com/

and you could even consider an apartment in Lucca itself big enough for 6

http://www.russvalentine.com/LuccaCe...LCAptHome.html

Some other towns I would look at near Lucca are Camaiore and Pietrasanta

http://www.tuscany-villas.it/~villas__camaiore__.shtm

http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/cam...fa/find.squery

A place with cooking classes:

http://www.lapianella.com/

In a recent thread, another poster, Jean, provided this information about a cooking class near Lucca (from the LA Times)

"In September, four of us had a wonderful cooking class, dining experience and local market excursion in the hills above Lucca, Italy. Our teacher was Antonella Michelotti, who opened her home to us. [email protected]. Rates vary."

Have fun deciding!

zeppole/stepsbeyond, much as I consider Lucca a great place nowadays, I have to respectfully disagree with your "hilltowns" remark. San Gimignano is 76 kilometres from Lucca, but only 40 from Siena. Plus the OP also considered staying in S. Gimignano proper, which is 0 kilometres from S. Gimignano, so S. Gimignano is not exactly a point in favor of Lucca. And Barga... just don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Barga, yes it's dramatic, and the castle-like, age-old duomo is certainly worth seeing (the pulpit inside in particular)... but I wouldn't say it's a competition for the picturesque, scenic towns of central and southern Tuscany, be they touristy like S. Gimignano or Monteriggioni, or totally off-the-beaten-track like Torri or Bagno Vignoni.
Carrara is another story if we're looking for advantages of staying in Lucca! And I'm not talking about the marble quarries, no: about the town, and its duomo, above all, which is among Italy's very best Romanesque churches. Plus the villas you mentioned; plus the vicinity to Pisa.
(Btw, I find it pretty confusing that you're posting under two screennames now. Why? It's just... you know, you're getting used to call people by their name, even if it's just a screenname. And it's strange if Max suddenly decides he wants to be called Christina from now on.)

Hi Franco!

I was going to take issue in your thread about the merits of Lucchese cooking, but I decided to let it pass! (But I'll admit its better than a lot of other Tuscan cooking.)

Point taken about whether San Gimignano is a reasonable day trip from Lucca, but I just can't get enthused about the picturesque in general, and Southern Tuscany in particular as the end-all be-all of the Italian rural experience. Heresy, I know, but not only to I think the tourist skein has become an obstacle to any direct contact with Italian culture, I just personally prefer an open, less man-handled landscape. Even le crete Sinese makes my heart beat faster than the val d'Orcia, and of course I would rather the vistas of the alps and the riviera, and that's why I live here.

Is the weather as good where you are as where I am?

As for Max/Christina, some posters just kept blowing up other people's threads every time I posted with childish taunts at me carried over from other threads where I kicked at tourism. By the way, did you read Walter Kaiser in last month's NYR of Books on the city of Florence?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arti...ticle_id=23464)

Anyway, didn't work. Point taken about whether San Gimignano is a reasonable day trip from Lucca, but my only purpose in providing all those links to the Lucca area was that I thought to the original poster might find them helpful. I like Cararra, too, and I didn't mention Pistoia because it isn't a hilltown, but I think it's quite rewarding. Ciao!

PS; Franco, when was the last time you were in Bagno Vignoni? I'm not sure "totally off-the-beaten-track" in any way describes it any more. It's on group tours!

my link to the walter kaiser reference didn't work. This one should:

http://www.nybooks.com/authors/15796

I've been in Bagno Vignoni in June 2008 - not that long ago. I was there twice that year, and alone on both occasions, i.e. the only tourist. Of course, if you prefer less man-handled landscapes, it's no big surprise that you don't fall in love with Tuscany. But as far as man-handled landscapes, it just doesn't have too many rivals. I'm much like you seem to be in terms of shuddering at the thought of tourist crowds, and I had been thinking about that (long and thorough) Tuscan holiday for 19 years - I always postponed it, and decided on a different destination each year since I was so afraid that the crowds would ruin the experience. And you know what? I just loved it. L-o-v-e-d it. (It was perhaps a happy season when I was there - it was exactly during some soccer championship, and obviously for that reason, nobody was traveling - I think tout le monde was at home watching TV, few soccer ignorants like myself excluded. All of Tuscany was empty of tourists.)
Btw, we should discuss Tuscan cuisine in depth at some time. But I don't want to carry this thread totally off-topic.

You're on about Tuscan cuisine for some other thread, and whether you think it's been altered in some areas.

I did like le Crete Sinese and could imagine holing up there and enjoying walks, etc. I stayed in Lucignano and had fun, and I really liked Chiusi! But I don't think fewer tourists change for me the overall ambiance, or the lack of a sense of adventure I had touring the val d'Orica. (Again-- I'd sooner the Maremma, just for sheer beauty.)

But if somebody told me they wanted to go to Italy and be away from tourism, I'd couldn't in conscience send them to Bagno Vignoni, even after your good report.

(We might have to stop now because every time I post past 1pm Italian time, I'm descended upon by Fodorites telling me I'm up past some bedtime they enforce! You too!)