We spent 9 days in Italy and every day was a storehouse of unique experiences and emotions. Florence was our next destination in Italy after Rome. Detailed itinerary of our 3 days in Rome can be found here.
Glimpse of Our Trip
- We visited in November and we had a fantastic trip. The tourist season is July-August but this is also the period of long queues, increased tariffs and lot of hustle and bustle. April-June & September-November is the time to beat the crowd and bag the best deals.
- While all tourist destinations were spectacular, for us the show-stealer were the Free Walking Tours. We have mentioned about this tours in our blog post here. These tours showed us the cities through the eyes of the locals. It was enriching and we highly highly highly recommend it!
- Our destinations included Rome (3 Days)> Florence (3 Days)> Venice (2 Days)
Re-living Experiences: Food, Vacationing, Photography & a Lot More
Day 1: Florence
We reached Florence at about 12 PM. We stayed in Plus Florence and it seemed to be pretty decent hotel. However, do note that the check-in time is 2:30 PM so you may have to leave your stuff in their locker until your room is available. Since we had some time before the Free Walking tour, we took the free guided tour of Santa Maria Novella Church and saw some of the most beautiful frescoes. The meeting point of the Free Walking Tour is at the entrance of the Church which faces the square. There are two daily tours: “Renaissance Tour” @11am and “Medici Tour” @2pm. Since we reached in afternoon we did the “Medici Tour” and it was amazing to know about the richness of Medici Family and their contribution to art in their museums. This takes about 2 hours.
We went to Uffizi after the tour ended. Our Uffizi guided tour started at 4:30 PM. If you love art and history, this spectacular museum cannot be missed. It houses some of the most important works of art from the Renaissance period (about 1500 A.D.), from Botticelli and Giotto to Michelangelo, Cimabue, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raffael. I also recommend you to do a guided tour so you can re-live the moments of Renaissance period.
There are many museums in Florence and it can be overwhelming. But here are the top 3 recommended museums: Uffizi, Accademia and Bargello. Again, please prebook the tickets so that you can save the time and energy to queue up.
Day 2: Pisa & Florence
We booked our tickets to Pisa for early morning so we could be in time for Accademia (museum where Michelangelo’s David is). The tickets for Pisa can be easily booked here. Once you deboard the train at Pisa De Centrale, it is about 10-15 mins walk to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
We returned at about 3 PM and were just in time to see Michelangelo’s David.
Day 3: Florence
We rented the bikes for 24 hours on the previous night to do a cycling tour. The average cost is about 25 Euros. We did a 40 Kms cycling trip to the vineyards and coffee gardens in Chianti region of Florence. In hindsight, we think it was too daring of us to do that considering it was our first cycling experience in 6 years! However, the adventure was absolutely worth it! If possible, do try cycling on the beautiful roads of Chianti and it will not disappoint you.
Two-third of our trip was over in Italy. It was hard to part ways with Florence but I was excited for the next part of our trip to Venice. Check out our adventures in Venice here.