Arrive Pisa Apr 23-- Need plan best town to stay

I would not stay overnight in Pisa, a few hours is all you need.
Siena = YES!! 2 nights . Take a walking tour, the culture is so interesting. Stay where you can wander out in the evening and
watch humanity in the historical Piazza del Campo. You wont regret it!

What are your interests?
Where will you fly home from?

Since you are arriving at night I see no reason not to stay in Pisa-makes perfect sense
The Field of Miracles all lit up at night is stunning

Thanks, flight from USA arrives if on time 8pm at PISA airport.
Getting dark about that time so ˆ think PISA might make sense.

Flex schedule...going to Germany after Italy. Bought D-ticket train pass good for one month.
SO probably fly on Lufthansa from some city in Italy to Munich.

IS Lucca good? PISA to LUcca is 9 miles.
I have Siena,,,,,on other post....looking at hotels now..

Lucca is closest to Pisa. Firenze (Florence) is the next closest.
If you have never been in Tuscany before, I'd stick to Tuscany.
If you stay in Pisa the first night, I would make it two nights so that you have one full day after your arrival. In that full day you can visit Lucca and Pisa. Both are 30 min apart by train.
Then after the second night you could move to Florence.
Florence requires several days to visit (3 nights are recommended at the very minimum).
But you could stay longer and use Florence to visit several other places on day trips by train or bus, by adding one night for each day trip. So you could visit, in separate day trips, places such as:
Arezzo (60 min by train)
Pistoia (30 min by train)
San Gimignano (1 hr by bus)
Siena (75 min by bus or 90 min by train)
You could also have a couple of nights in Siena and visit both Siena (needs almost a full day) and also San Gimignano (located half way between Florence and Siena).

That would be already at least 9 nights on the ground.

If your flight out is again from Pisa, you might want to be in Pisa the last night, if your flight is in the morning. If it's in the afternoon, then you can stay in Florence. The journey from Florence to Pisa airport is about 90 min or so. If your flight to Germany is out of Florence, then stay in Florence.

Maybe skip Dolomites in April as the cable cars won’t be running and the weather is pretty unpredictable.

If budget and price is your deciding factor then that will definitely guide some of your choices. I'll admit I'm not completely in touch with the hostel scene but Lucca is not the kind of town that will have a ton of cheap, youth-centric options. Pisa has universities and is more geared to that and as a big city Florence will have more options as well.

If you just want cheaper lodging you could look into someplace like Pistoia or Prato. Neither of them are very touristy so staying should have some cheaper options and they are midway between Lucca and Florence for visiting both on the cheap local train line if you're interested. Otherwise I would see if you can find a hostel cheap in Florence and visit these other places as day trips. Or a couple of days in Pisa - check out Lucca and maybe the coast of you want - and then onto Florence and check out Siena and maybe Arezzo from there by bus and/or train. Bologna is close and a huge university town so probably a lot of hints on cheap lodging, food etc there. The regionale train to Bologna is slower (1.5 hours versus 35 minutes or so) but is less than half the price.

Siena has a university and may have some cheaper options but it is heavily touristed so I don't know if most places will have been used into more expensive lodging versus cheap ones. The cheap options will probably be more of a room rental outside of town situation rather than in the city center.

Unfortunately touristy does not lend itself to having a bunch of cheap housing and dining options. Food in Italy is generally very cheap (and very good) but very touristy places like Florence are always looking to get as many tourist euros as they can. I've heard reports from Italians of having to argue for the "Italian price" in Florence when charged twice as much for things like pizza as they deemed reasonable. If you're traveling in a strict budget you may need to make some choices, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the country.

Enjoy Italy,
=Tod