Tuscany home base

Use Florence as the home base, you will love the evenings you spend there. You can easily get to all the areas you want by train, but since you have such a brief time there, you might want to rent a car (which creates a different set of problems) or design your stay with a mix of short train trips and one or two coach trips (say to San Gimignano or Siena)

Rick Steves says "Siena is Italy's best medieval city experience" and "it's best experienced by twilight...Whatever you do, enjoy a sleepy medieval evening in Siena. The next morning, you can see the city's major sights in half a day."

If I were doing Tuscany in 1 week, I wouldn't stick religiously to a home-base plan. If your "only one week" is a seven day week, maybe spend 3 nights in Siena (with day trips to great nearby hill towns), 1 night in Riomaggiore, where you'd do the easy 30-minute hike from Riomaggiore to Manarola, getting a good taste of Cinque Terre. The hike starts from the train station at Riomaggiore. The walk is called the Via dell’Amore (Lovers’ Way), probably because the beautiful view from the cliffs overlooking the ocean is considered "romantic".

Then spend 1 night in Lucca and the rest of your time in Florence. At least, that would be MY ideal 1 week in Tuscany.

Lucille, may I suggest Agriturismo Cretaiole in Pienza? (See my post on the graffiti wall.) We have stayed there the past two years and day-tripped to Florence, Siena, Assisi, Cortona, Volterra, Montalcino, Montepulciano, etc. Pienza itself is a wonderful town. And you wouldn't find Cretaiole touristy....a slice of real Tuscan life where your group can experience pasta (pici) making, wine tasting, olive oil testing, etc. http://www.cretaiole.it

For where you want to go, Lucca would be a reasonably good home base. It's also great in the evenings. By train you can easily get to the CT and Florence. With a car you can do the above, Siena and Pisa. Actually, you can do Pisa by train, too. If you have a car, there's free parking at the family-run and affordable Hotel Melecchi just outside of the walls.

Roy wrote, "may I suggest Agriturismo Cretaiole in Pienza?"

Cretaiole sounds perfect, but I e-mailed them and they only accept reservations by the full week, and it must be Saturday to Saturday.

What a shame.

We will have a car when we spend a week in Tuscany. So we decided to rent an appartment very ruraly but at equal distance between Florence and Siena. Being an extended family of 4 adults and 2 kids that is more affordable (even if you factor in the cost of the vehicle), offers more room, and a pool to relax and visit with each other after a day of sightseeing. We found our place through www.interchalet.com. Most places will only rent Sat-Sat but there are quite a few that will allow a different rental agreement outside the high season.