Just got back yesterday

Hi All, Just got back from Italy yesterday after 10 days there and here are my observations. Make sure, I repeat, make sure you book as much stuff in advance as you can, i.e. museum tickets and guided tours. Secondly, don't believe everything you hear about Italian drivers on the autostrada, it was fine as long as you pay attention to who is coming up behind you in the fast lane. If you don't want to worry about anything just stay to the right, all of the fast drivers stay in the fast lane for the most part, they don't jump lanes a lot there.

Oh one thing about Italian drivers to be prepared for though...lines on the road matter little to them. On the highways they straddle the lane lines a lot and on twisty turny Tuscan roads their tires come over the middle line into oncoming traffic a lot. If you are doing Pisa, don't do more than a day there, other than the area around the tower there is not much to Pisa for someone on a shortish trip. Florence is amazing...if you have a car, make the effort and park at Piazza de Michaelangelo and walk down to the city, the view will not disappoint from up there day or night. As a matter of fact there is a little cafe on a landing up there where you can sit, have lunch and look over Florence. We easily did the Uffizi and Accademia in one day, 11am reservation for one and 3pm for the other. GET YOUR RESERVATIONS IN ADVANCE though. Also, for these two location, download Rick's tours onto your ipods, we did it and it was awesome and saved us a lot of time. We took a cooking class the next day in Florence and had a blast it was at In Tovola cooking school near the Pitti Palace and it was a great experience for only 65 euro per person. Try to get into Roberto's part of the room, he is very entertaining. We made a four course meal including gnocchi and chicken cacciatore and then ate what we made, wine included.

Thanks for posting your impression of Italy! I love this kind of post. How long was the cooking class? any restaurant recomendations in Florence? Did you got to Mercato Centrale?

The class was billed as 4 hours but we were in the 3-3 1/2 range...keep in mind they have two different classes, the one we attended which runs on mon and weds and a shorter one on tues and thurs nights. As for restaurants, we ate what we made Weds night so that was our only meal that night but on Tuesday we went to Osteria dei Baroncelli, which was awesome