Siena

Andrea,
Not sure where you will be coming from but I have done it from Florence a couple of times. It is very easy on a bus. Details are in Rick's book. You leave right near the train station.
Jim

A day trip to Florence by bus is easy - easier than by train, in fact.

There is bus service from Siena to other towns but the schedules are less frequent. There are timetables online but you have to do some digging. Where did you have in mind?

I was thinking of Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Montepulciano, and maybe another town or two. I'm just exploring the possibility of not having a car in Tuscany. My brother and sister stayed in a small town in Northern Tuscany (San Baranto) without a car and it limited how long they could be gone because of the bus schedule. They were always back in their little town before dinner. I would like to have longer days out visiting other towns.

Andrea,
See http://www.sienamobilita.it/EN/index.html
and
http://www.sitabus.it/sita-toscana/Firenze%20-%20Siena.pdf

Andrea - Henry gave you the best links I've seen. The Siena Mobilita website has a big .pdf file of timetables for connections to the towns you want to visit. Click on the "Extra-Urban Service" for the file. Then use "find" on your browser to find the specific timetables for the towns.

Note that there aren't all that many runs during the day - I suspect the schedules are oriented to commuters, not tourists.

Getting around the smaller towns of Tuscany is definitely easier with a car. But parking overnight in Siena could be difficult - as is just getting in and out of town. When we have a car, I prefer to stay in an agriturismo with a parking lot and easy driving to get to and from.

I tried to copy & paste that link but it didn't work. I'll play around with it. My instinct is to have a car in Tuscany, but I was just wondering if we stayed in a larger place like Siena if it was workable without one.

Thanks Henry!

Andrea try this hyperlink to the .pdf file itself. It takes a while to download so be patient. Thanks again to Henry for posting the website. As I mentioned, it's been hit or miss to find the right one.

It's a tough decision whether to rent a car or not. I remember my first visit to Siena walking up along one of the walls and seeing another hilltown in the distance and wishing I could get there - but I had come by train. I've rented cars for Tuscany since - but have stayed outside of Siena.

We had good luck once taking a car to Lucca. We found a great hotel just outside the walls with its own gated parking. But even so - and Lucca isn't that big a town - it was still time consuming to navigate out through the suburban development and then back in.

Hi Andrea. I would suggest renting a car. We stayed in Siena (10 min from the city walls) & used a car to get to all of the towns that you mentioned. I think it would be difficult to get to many of those places via public transportation. Driving in Tuscany is not difficult but a GPS is a must.

Whatever you do, if you do decide to rent a car (which I did on my 2nd trip to Italy and very glad I did it!!), be VERY CAREFUL about the ZTL zones. In Siena, Pisa, and Florence, these zones are controlled electronically. For example, we drove to Siena and found a parking lot maybe 10 meters from the gate. If we'd missed the parking lot entrance and kept going (which would've been easy to do lol!) through the ZTL gate, a large ticket would be coming my way. And we walked under them in Florence too. Other towns have ZTLs but they're not electronically controlled (especially in the smaller towns). Definitely if you do decide to rent a car, don't take it to Florence, take the bus instead. The other thing to consider is that even if you can get to these towns by bus, you are kind of at their mercy. You might really love say, Volterra and want to stay longer, but the bus leaves whenever, or you might be in a smaller town and feel like a couple hours is enough and want to move on but can't. Having a car most of all gives you freedom to set your own pace. And I definitely agree that a GPS is invaluable!

Thanks for all your replies. I think we will get a rental car. And I will be sure to avoid the ZTL's! The freedom of having the car with be worth any drawbacks.

In addition to what Debra said, you might want to consider another possibility which is that you'll be Tuscan hill-towned out in a couple of days (they tend to fuzz together in short order) and want to move on. A car would give you this flexibility. If you wind up with open time, either (or both) Assisi or Ravenna would be interesting.