6 Day Wander in Florence and Milan, Italy

Quick break from my Portugal posts, because my dear friend, X, is taking a long overdue trip to Italy this summer! She will be visiting family in Rome, but also wants to see some other parts of Italy while she's there, particularly Florence and Milan. We recently had dinner when I visited NY for work, and I was more than happy to offer to do some research on itineraries for her! You could also take this itinerary and add a couple days at the front or end in Rome and/or Venice, and have a pretty solid 10-12 day trip to Italy!

DESTINATION:  
Italy - Florence, Milan and some surrounding areas, with Rome as a starting point

DURATION:
6 - 8 days, 5 - 7 nights
Base trip is 6 days, 5 nights, with two optional additional days/nights

Milan

Ireland & Italy: The Hotels

Over the course of our 14 day, 13 night trip to Europe last summer, we stayed in six different hotels and one villa. That's a lot of hotels!

I spent a lot of time on TripAdvisor prior to booking to research where we would stay as much as possible, and 6/7 of the places we stayed were great.

Since we were trying to keep to a pretty low budget, and our flights went about $500 over what we were expecting, we decided that we wanted to keep our total hotel budget under $1,000 per person, or around $150/room/night. With the exchange rate, this meant compromising on location or amenities in a few places.

Here's a run down of our hotels.

Florence, Italy

As I've mentioned before, Florence holds a special place in my heart. So you can imagine that I was a little bit disappointed that our time there didn't quite go as planned.

Our first challenge: We were exhausted. We had been rush rush rushing for 10 days by the time we got to Florence, and we just hit the wall when we got there.

Our second challenge: The weather was still ridiculously hot and humid!

We still managed to see what we wanted to in Florence, and I wouldn't have skipped it for the world. But I didn't get to show off the city in the way I had wanted to.

Florence's Duomo - the photos never really do it justice!

San Gimignano, Pisa & Cinque Terre, Italy

After the stunning Tuscan wedding, there were only a few short days left of our trip, but boy were we determined to make the best of them!

SAN GIMIGNANO
The first stop was San Gimignano, which I was SO excited to share with SAY, M and Shorty. See, I'd been talking about this town since I'd first been in 2003 (on the trip where I met BF), and we were all really looking forward to it, and to having a night in a small little town where SAY and Dr G could decompress after the craziness that is planning and executing a destination wedding in Italy!

A Big Fat Tuscan Wedding

I've been to quite a few weddings in the last few years. And while all of them had special, beautiful, memorable moments, none were quite as magical as SAY & Dr G's wedding at Tenuta di Corsano in Tuscany.

It could have been the build up: a stunning evening of delicious food in Siena, fireworks and fireflies...

Siena & Corsano, Italy

After a hot and crowded Rome, the breezy Tuscan countryside was just perfect. The weather was still HOT but there was much less humidity, making it a pleasant change!

We arrived in Siena in the early evening, and took a cab from the train station to our hotel. The train station in Siena is at the bottom of the hill the city is situated on, so cabs are a good way to get to the main areas.

Rome, Italy

Rome.

Rome was the exact opposite of Ireland. Where Ireland was cool, clean and refreshing, Rome was hot, dirty, and humid. But even though we wilted the moment we left an air conditioned environment, Rome was beautiful. Crowded and expensive, but beautiful.

Our time in Rome was split - a full day and a half at the beginning of the trip, and another almost full day at the end of it.

St. Peter's Basilica is one of the most gorgeous spots in Rome. You can go into the basilica without touring the Vatican, but of course, there's a line to get in.

Travel Photo Tuesday: Roman Accordion Player

Resurrecting an old favorite of mine: travel photo Tuesdays! I'll be honest here and say I probably won't do this every week, but I love sharing my passion of photography on here, so I'll give it a shot.

We stumbled upon this guy while we were wandering around the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. I have a special spot in my heart for accordion players, and this guy was such a gem!

Neglected!

I have seriously neglected this blog since I returned from my big trip to Europe!

What can I say - life has gotten in the way of blogging. And by that, I mean I've been absolutely swamped at work, and have not had the energy to get on the computer once I'm home. But! I just might have found my blogging mojo again, and am currently drafting some posts about our amazing trip to Europe.

So be patient, anyone out there reading who hasn't disappeared in the weeks and weeks since I've last posted!

Recaps of our trip are coming soon!

Rough outline: Siena & San Gimignano (v2)

Of all the days of the trip, the ones we've adjusted the most are the days we're in Siena and Tuscany. I'm really happy with how we've adjusted things, because 1) we now have more time with SAY and Dr G, 2) we're doing a few things that are new, and 3) we have lots of free time to just enjoy Italy and where we are!

Saturday:
- Arrive in Siena in the evening (bus or train from Rome is around 3 hours)
- Meet up with friends, check out Siena, wander around

Rough outline: Florence (v2)

I could spend an entire trip to Italy based out of Florence. It's been my home city away from home since I did a semester there during college, and I'm super excited to be heading back soon! We'll only have two nights there, so we'll be packing in quite a bit, but I think we'll still have time for everything.

Wednesday:
- Arrive in Florence by bus late morning, check into hotel
- Uffizi gallery for Shorty - it's on her bucket list of things to do on this trip! I'm not sure I'll go in this time around, since I spend many extensive tours there when I lived in Florence.

Rough outline: Rome (v2)

It seems like this trip is constantly changing!

But now that we have our itinerary set, at least in terms of airline flights, I'm going to revise the rough outline of a Rome itinerary from a few months ago.

It's actually fairly close to the same itinerary, with the adjustment that we don't get to Rome until late Thursday night, and have an extra night there at the end of the trip. Also, my friends who are getting married let me know that there's a rough plan to celebrate the Bride's birthday and everyone meeting up in town on the Friday night we're there!

A love letter to bella Firenze

View of the city from Piazza Michelangelo.

I've discovered in our recent trip planning that many people who have been to Italy either didn't enjoy Florence immensely, or could take it or leave it. It's rarely people's favorite city. And I can kind of understand - it lacks the romanticism of Venice and the vast history of Rome. It doesn't have a leaning tower or The Last Supper. It can be crowded, gets very hot during the summer, and is fairly industrial and dirty. The public transportation isn't as good in Florence as in other cities, and it's pretty pricey.

But despite all of those things, Florence remains my favorite city in Italy.

Bus travel around Tuscany

As much as I love the train system in Italy, one of the places I didn't explore as much as I wanted to in 2002 when I lived in Florence was Tuscany. I know, crazy, right? Since it's RIGHT THERE? I didn't see as much of it as I wanted because I was young and new to travel and didn't like to go places I couldn't get to on a train. A train was safer, you see, because it had one place to go, and was pretty difficult to mess up with. Buses, on the other hand, were tougher - there were different timetables and schedules, where to get the tickets was always somewhat of a mystery, and there were rarely the convenient audio reminders of which station you were about to get to.

Bus travel in Italy requires a little more effort than train travel, but the benefits of getting to go to the smaller towns and locations were great.

Day Dreaming of San Gimignano, Italy

I've been having a serious case of the day dreams when it comes to trip planning lately. Now that we're officially going, I've been playing around with itineraries and things to do, and talking to the people we're going to be traveling with, and I'm getting really excited.

My newest day dream? Adding a night in San Gimignano into the mix.

Europe 2011? BOOKED!

We booked our flights!

It's officially official - we've got our tickets for the trip! And while expensive, we found a deal that included the flight to Ireland, the flight from Dublin to Rome, and the flight home from Italy.

Our trip includes four nights in Ireland!

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

We've gone and done it again.

We've changed our itinerary.

I realized as we were planning that something was holding us back from our plan - something kept us from getting tickets last year. The themes that kept coming up when we would talk about it were 1) the amount of time we would be gone, and 2) the budget.

So I sat down with BF, and with M and Shorty, who are planning on doing the same itinerary as us, and we came up with a plan that we were all a little more comfortable with.

The old plan was: Italy first for 9 nights, then Ireland for 6 nights, with a proposed budget of close to $4,000.

The new plan is: Ireland first for 5 nights, then Italy for 7 nights, with a proposed budget of around $3,200.

3 Day Wander in Florence, Italy

I've had a soft spot for Florence since I did my semester abroad there in 2002. At first glance, it's not many people's favorite city in Italy - it's crowded, rather industrial, and, well, kind of dirty. But once you get past all that, it's a place unlike others in Italy - a city, but with a small town feel. We'll only be in Florence for two nights, but there's a lot we're going to pack in!

4 Day Wander in Siena, Italy

We'll be in Siena for three nights, including for our friends' wedding! I cannot WAIT for this portion of the trip - just to be in Italy with so many friends!

DAY 1
- arrive in Siena late afternoon (bus from Rome is approximately 2.5 hours)
- meet up with friends, check out Siena, wander around

3 Day Wander in Rome, Italy

To keep myself excited about the trip and avoid thinking about the budget, I've been putting together some rough outlines of potential itineraries for each of the cities we're going to visit on our Italy trip! Here is the one for Rome - we'll arrive on a Thursday, and then leave for Siena on Saturday late morning-ish.

DAY 1
- arrive in Rome in the morning to early afternoon, depending on which flight we actually end up getting
- get settled into our hotel, then walk the main touristy area, checking out both the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain, which both warrant more than one glimpse (Trevi Fountain is particularly cool to see in the evening/at night)