Things to do in Florence

I have taken several walking tours with European Odyssey. All of the tours were in Rome, however. The European Odyssey website offers several walking tours in Florence. Although I have not done any of the tours they offer in Florence, I can state that their Roman tour guides are very informative and friendly. I would expect that their Florence tour guides would be the same caliber. I found their tours to be quite reasonably priced as well.

There is a wonderful self guided walking tour of Florence in Rick Steve's book.

I have taken several tours in Italy with Viator.com - they are a tour consolidator and I see they offer at least 4 different tours of Florence and the Florence area.
I've been very happy with their tours.

When you ask for a day trip out of Florence with a private driver, what is your goal? Do you want to see countryside or see other towns (like Sienna or Pisa)? Do you want a private driver because you will be having wine (and so don't can't drive yourself), or just for convenience?

Many towns outside of Florence can be seen easily as a day trip on your own without a driver, via trains or buses. If you want to see several in one day, or want to see towns that don't have convenient public transit connections to Florence, a driver would be handy.

For the walk, it sounds like you want a private guide. Rick's Italy book has recommendations for this, as well as other walking tour options. He also has lots of details about day trips from Florence and how to do these on your own, so you can see what's involved.

Let us know what you want out of this day trip, and people can give specific advice.

We did our own walking tour using the guidebook. We took the bus to Siena for a day trip and walked around and this was pretty easy to do, we went and bought our tickets at the bus station which is near the train station a day or two beforehand. As for other trips outside Florence, we booked a Chianti tour with "Tours by Roberto" listed in the guidebook as well and had a great tour.

Agree that Rick's "do it yourself" walking tours are great and the price is definitely right!! But if you want a tour with highly knowledgeable guides who can add a lot to your experience, all the tours with Walks of Italy are terrific.