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Guide or No Guide in Tuscan Towns?

Posted by on

There are nine of us that will be in a villa outside Florence from October 8 - 15, 2016. We plan to take the train into Florence a few days. On other days, we have cars and plan to drive to a few of the Tuscan towns (Siena, Greve, Lucca, San Gimignano). For some towns we make take the train or bus and leave the cars at the Villa. All of us will have Rick Steves' guidebooks and most will have downloaded the app with walking tours. The app has general descriptions of the towns, but not the walking tours that you find for Florence, Rome, etc.

Should we have a guide when we get to town?

Are the towns small enough where we can merely walk around, see the churches, wine shops and the like without a guide?

If your answer is "Yes" for certain towns and "No" for others, please share your thoughts.

I am trying to organize four couples and a single to make sure we have the best time that we can have. There is a balance between too much organization/structure and too much free time. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Posted by
1272 posts

IMHO there is no comparison between a live guide (assuming a good one) and a book. Even in small towns a few hours with a guide bring the town alive. Books can't answer questions, a guide can. And even the biggest book is only going to have a few paragraphs at best on each local attraction; compare the number of words a guide can say in 5-10 minutes to that.

I'm not saying you can't have a good time w/o a guide, bu with 9 people the cost of hiring your own guide starts to come way down on a per-person basis. When the RS tour goes to San Gimignano, for example, the guide gives a 2 hour or so walking tour and then you have some time on your own. If you can replicate this, a 2 hour tour at each of these towns, I think you will find it rewarding.

Posted by
16895 posts

Most of those towns are very small, with Siena being the biggest and most complex, so I would give more priority to a guide for Siena.

Posted by
4 posts

Thanks to both of you! I have teamed with RS guides before and they were always great. We will definitely get a guide for Siena. As long as we can team with a guide for an hour or so, that should be just fine. I have been to Italy several times, but this will be the first time to the smaller towns with a group of family. My concern was employing a guide for "the day" in a town that could be traversed in 20 minutes.

Other ideas and replies are welcomed!

Posted by
7180 posts

I loved the guide we had in Siena, she was one of the best I'd ever had and she really made that city come alive for us. We also had an excellent local guide in Lucca and I felt it improved our visit. So, yes, I would definitely advise local guides at least for those two places. I've not been to Greve so I can't speak to that. I felt that San Gimignano was fine with just wandering around with a guidebook and a self guided walking tour.

Posted by
4 posts

Nancy:

Thanks. Did you use RS guides? Would you mind sharing names and contacts? I like your advice and having "proven" guides is always welcomed. I was considering a guide for Lucca/Pisa and another for Siena. Just from these few posts, it looks like I am heading in the right direction.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and input. Additional thoughts continue to be welcomed.

Posted by
7180 posts

Areese, no I didn't use RS recommended guides. We were there 15 years ago and it's quite likely the guides we used are no longer doing that, also I wasn't involved in finding the guides and wouldn't remember their names. Sorry I can't help you there.

Posted by
1446 posts

We used a guide in Volterra (she was in Rick Steves' Volterra episode) and I'm glad we did. She provided us with a lot of interesting information regarding the town and she customized the tour to our taste. She pointed out all sorts of things that we would have missed otherwise. We did a half-day tour with her but easily could have done a full-day tour with her and utilized her in the Etruscan Museum, etc. If you want her contact info, let me know. I'm not sure if she still does tours but her name is Annie Adair and she is an American living in Tuscany with her Italian husband. We utilized her in 2009 so things may have changed.

Posted by
1 posts

With the recommendation of Rick Steves' Tuscany guide - we used Antonella Piredda for a "wine & cheese tour" in southern Tuscany, specifically Montepulciano and Piensa. We were a private family group of 17 Americans - and we loved Antonella. She is engaging, fun, informative, witty - a great tour guide and better story teller. Our day flew buy with her - and were left begging for more. We only wished we had also used Antonella for more Siena province visits. Will not make this mistake next time. Antonella's is also very easy to work with via email - very responsive and very attentive and flexible to the customer's needs. Worth every Euro of her fee and then some.

Posted by
7 posts

I highly recommend Paola Cialdini in Siena for Tuscan day trips. She is amazing and took us to places we would have never found. She is Siena-born and raised and has great stories, brilliant with history and local culture and she is a joy to be around. I was skeptical in hiring a guide b/c I like to "wander" and do stuff on my own without an agenda. I have recommended her many times over the past few years and everyone loves her! You can find her on Facebook when you search takemeoutintuscany.

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