Day trip from Florence

There is an all day bus tour that leaves the train station in Florence around 9:00 AM and returns about 5:00 PM (oops, 17:00 hours). The first stop was in San Gimignano, a small hill town south of Florence that will remind you of "Under the Tuscan Sun", then on to Siena where you will have a group lunch. There is a local guide in both places who brings the towns to life and you also get some free time to explore and shop. The price was about 60 Euros. I just looked on their website and found that they have reversed the order of the towns, but everything else looks the same. Below is a link to this specific tour, but once there you can go o Grayline's home page to look for others. http://www.grayline.com/grayline/destinations/europe/florence.go?mode=activityDetail&apid=608&sid=584& Have a great trip and don't cut short your time in Florence.

Last week (7 March 2011), my family and I took a full-day (10 hr) private tour into Tuscany with Giuseppe Aulisa of Florence Tour (www.florencetour.com&#59; [email protected]). Guiseppe and his wife, Paola Migliorini, own the company, and they are mentioned in Rick's 2011 Florence & Tuscany guide. Their 8-pasenger mini-van was very comfortable and Giuseppe (a native of Florence) is a font of knowledge and very passionate about whatever he's describing. We designed our own one-day itinerary and then worked out all of the arrangements with Paola by e-mail months before we left. Giuseppe was very punctual in meeting us at our hotel in Florence on the arranged day. The way it worked was that Giuseppe dropped us off at the center of several towns (Volterra, San Gimignano, Monteriggioni, and Siena), and then we arranged for a time to meet him to go on to the next town. We were always a few minutes late getting back to the van, but Giuseppe was very patient about it. I highly recommend Florence Tour if you are considering a day trip into Tuscany from Florence! We will definitely take a future tour with them when we next return to Florence.

The biggest fun we had last October was a day tour with the Fiat 500 Touring Club (http://www.500touringclub.com/tour/). Great cars, great guides and just a uniquely fun experience. would do it again and again. We also did the bus ride out to Siena and it wasn't stressful - the bus depot is across the street from the train station and the scenery is lovely. You can't lose any way you go. Enjoy!

My wife and I have been on the Grayline tour described by Jim above. It's just as he described only we got on the bus 1 block away from the train station. Cost was 52E each. The tour guide in Siena was just great. Also, the tour includes the admittance to the Basilica. Note that in Florence, Grayline operates as CAF Tours (www.caftours.com).