Use of taxis in Florence to visit surrounding areas

You'd do better to find a tour that goes to those towns in a shuttle bus. A taxi would be just too expensive. You should be able to find them online.

Why not use public transportation? Fiesole is only a few miles away, buses go there frequently. You can also get to San Gimignano by bus. Bus or train gets you to Pisa and Lucca for a daytrip.

Small group tours are available from Firenze out to several small cities and/or vineyards, including lunch.

How much time do you have?

So many places near Firenze!

Taxi cabs in Italy are expensive. For example the flat rate from Florence city center to the airport is 22 euro (plus bag charges). That is basically $25 for a 3.5 mile trip (the Florence airport is practically downtown). Fiesole is very close, therefore a taxi is doable, although it's also well served by ATAF city bus no. 7. But you could for example take no. 7 going in the afternoon, visit the Roman amphitheater and the museum, have dinner there (several good restaurants and some of the best pizzerias), then come down by taxi.

San Gimignano would be expensive. You are better off taking the SITA bus no. 131 and go there by bus. You need to change in Poggibonsi to bus 130 for the short trip up to SG (but you could also take the taxi from Poggibonsi, since I think there are taxi at the station and it wouldn't be expensive).

All other locations are better done by public transit (train/buses). A trip to Pisa would cost you 100 euro each way by taxi vs. ~12 euro round trip by train.

Hi Zoe,

Thanks for your suggestions...

Do you know where the tour groups can be contracted? Sounds great! We have 9 days, but a little slow on our aging feet :) I hope they're not like some tours where you can hardly catch your breath and it's on to the next stop!

Juancho- We used Walk About Florence for an all day tour of Tuscany. They picked us up in Florence on a Bus and we went to Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa and we stopped for lunch at a Chianti Vineyard. Super fun day and we could not beat the price. It was a long day but we had so much fun. It was nice to just hop on a bus and let someone else do the driving.

Here is the website and the tour we took:

http://www.walkaboutflorence.com/tours/best-tuscany-tour

We have used Avventure Bellissime tours-Italy.com which is an Italian company that does small group tours all over Italy

Tours by Roberto gets very good reviews.

I'm impressed with this website, and thank you all for your suggestions! John

If you really need a private car to go around, look for a NCC service (noleggio con conducente, car rental with driver), basically an unmetered limousine service where you hire a car setting up the price in advance according to your plans.