Tours of Florence?

We took a Walks of Italy tour in Florence (also Venice) in October and loved it. This one is new this year - VIP David & Duomo tour: early Accademia tour and skip the line dome climb with terrace access. Starts early AM right when the Accademia opens to see David and a little time for some other rooms. Went through the Duomo Museum, Baptistery and the Duomo, taking us up to the terrace (not open to general public), before we could decide if we wanted to complete the climb (we did). It was 3 hours (not including climb to top), so not a lot of detail, but as we're not into art it was the right amount for us, with explanations of what we were seeing and very good tour guide. Oh, and if you have a Rick Steves' Guide book, you can get a 10% discount when you book the tickets.

While I wouldn't consider this a splurge, we also did a fun 75 minute tour at the Palazzo Vecchio - entry fee is 10 Euro and it was additional 4 Euro for the tour. It was supposed to be Secret Passages, there was a mix up on the times and they offered the Inferno Tour (based on the book/movie). Told us it would take the same route/information. Neither of us had read the book or seen the movies, and it was still great, just a few references, and took us behind the scenes (in the map room we went through a secret door!). We also climbed the tower and had a fantastic view of the city, and towards the Duomo/Bell Tower.

Thank you. I am not familiar with Walks of Italy tours, so I will search. I have hear of Walk about Florence as tour guides.

Also consider Context Travel (www.contexttravel.com) for small group tour options. Highly educated guides and a wide range of tour options. I have signed up for many Context tours in Rome, and enjoyed all of them. For Florence, I've booked a private guide because my interests run to the less-covered topics (Dante's Medieval Italy, for example), but I know of many of the guides working for Context, and they would all be good choices.

Happy planning!

I've seen other posters recommend Walk about Florence and also Walks of Italy.

I will check out Context Travel...I have been to Florence many times, so it might be cool for me to get a different view/perspective.

We've taken Walks of Italy tours in both Rome & Florence and are booking again for this year with the adult son & girlfriend and highly recommend them; groups are not overwhelming in size compared to some tour bus groups we have seen or the guides walking around with a flag and a horde of followers. The guides we've had in 5 tours range from very good to amazing. In Florence they did a split day with Uffizi and Accademia and the same guide(our 4 person morning group bought him lunch in between!)

Thank you. I like the idea of a small group. When I did the 4-hour marathon tour of Uffizi/Vasari Corridor there were only 5 of us and it was great.