Best Tuscany day trips?

I would make the academia earlier on day 1 since it's a bit of a quickie (15 minutes, an hour tops if you want to glance at the other sculptures there), and Uffizi afterwards so you can really take your time there.

If you are choosing between Pisa and Siena, choose Siena. Pisa is a bit overrated, although I did find the grave of the famous mathematician Fibbanacci there, and enjoyed the echo in the baptistery. Climbing the leaning tower is an experience, but I was too chicken to go to the very top (tickets to climb the tower are hard to come by and spendy if doing that interests you). Siena, though, I stayed 1 night and wished I had stayed much longer. The local cuisine is tasty and reasonably priced compared to a lot of touristy places, the sights are breathtaking, and I love all the medieval architecture and windy roads. Either way, Pisa is about an hour by train from Florence, and Siena is about 45 minutes by bus.

From Florence you can easily visit San Gimigano or Siena by bus as day trips. There are sevearl tour companies in Florence that will take you around tuscany and to wineries and towns. I used Roberto from Rick's book and tv show last year and have another day booked with him this summer. He picks people up in either Florence or Siena and has joinable day tours you can do.
http://www.toursbyroberto.com/tours.html

I'm going to ask a potentially stupid question: The 7 hour bike tour I'm looking at for D3 is just south of Florence in the Chianti wine country (just north of Siena). Considering that trip, would it be redundant to day trip to Siena or SG (i.e., is the region I'll be biking in fairly similar to SG and Siena)? I know they all have their unique qualities, but since I'm only going to have 3 days I'm trying to get the best "sampling" of the region that I can.

If Siena is a better use of time than Pisa, any suggestions on best way to visit? Just bus over after the Uffizi on D2? Or is a half day guided tour better? I looked at the link above for Roberto's tour, and the half day tours cover the Chianti region, which is where we'll be biking on D3.

The Uffizzi is more crowded in the afternoon, so most of Rick's guided tour groups (for instance) schedule their visit first thing in the morning. But there are always trade-offs, so some groups that have a lot of other early mornings in their plan do book a Uffizzi reservation at 16:00, which gives them a good 2 hours there. If something has to go, I would choose Siena over Pisa because it has more to see.

What if I do lucca and Pisa the afternoon of D2 (after the Uffizi Gallery in the morning, I'd move the ticket time to 8:15 so I could leave for Pisa/Lucca by noon or so). Since I'll be doing a long bike tour in the Chianti region south of Florence the next day, would Pisa plus nearby Lucca be a better option than Siena? Or is Siena still the way to go? I'm sure either would be incredible!

Your bike trip in Chianti sounds interesting. How did you arrange this? I don't see any quite like this in Rick's book?

Thanks, Robert

Hi Robert,

I heard about the bike tour from a prior post on the travel forum, then looked up the site below and read reviews...sounds awesome. I haven't booked it yet, but plan to. Here's the post and link:

There's a really fun bicycle tour in Tuscany including wine tasting, olive oil tasting, touring a beautiful castle and lunch that I highly recommend.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187895-d668057-Reviews-Tuscany_Bike_Tours-Florence_Tuscany.html

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Kristina,

Thank you for the information on Tuscany Bike Tours. The reviews in TripAdvisor where outstanding. We definitely plan to add this to our Tuscany trip in May.

Thank you again, Robert

Definitely Siena. An easy bus ride from Florence, and what a scenic ride it is. The best gelato anywhere, on the main square of town. Delightful!

Glad to hear that Robert! Hope you have a blast. I'm really looking forward to it too, I bet it will be a highlight of the trip! :)

Well, Siena it is! Thanks for the help everyone!