Florence Italy Travel Blog

I'm Suzanne and I want to welcome you to my travel blog on Florence, Italy - one of the most amazing cities in Europe! This is a travel & photo blog of my trip to Florence, San Gimignano, Siena, Pisa & Volterra.

Why not grab a coffee (or a glass of vino), stop by for a few minutes, and let me share some stories and photos of Florence.

Since this is a blog, all the posts are in time order, newest first. Here is a list of all the posts in case you are in a rush to find something:

- Florence In a Day Article
- Tuscany In September
- A Florence Hills Tour
- A villa in Tuscany
- Tuscany Map with Cities
- Cheap Flights to Italy
- My vacation in Tuscany
- Flight to Pisa
- Florence
- Review of Anglo American Hotel in Florence
- First Evening in Florence
- Florence SightSeeing on a Rainy Day
- Last Morning in Florence
- Our Hertz Nightmare
- A Villa in Vitolini
- Views of San Gimignano
- Chilling out at the Villa in Vitolini
- Volterra
- A day in Siena


If you're planning a trip to Italy, you may want to look at my Florence Italy website. I would also recommend a visit to the Tuscany Section of Tripadvisor for lots of reviews of things to do and places to stay and eat in Florence.

Ciao for now!

My vacation in Tuscany - September 2005

I've just returned from a fantastic vacation in Tuscany.

My itinerary was:

7th-8th September - Pisa
8-10th September - Florence
10th-17th September - a villa in Vitolini near Vinci
12th September - A daytrip to San Gimignano
15th September - A daytrip to Volterra and Siena
17th-18th September - Lucca
18th-19th September - Pisa

I'll be posting a journal and photos of my trip over the next week, so come back and visit again!

Tuscany Map with Cities

When you start planning your trip to Tuscany the first thing you will probably say is "show me a map of Tuscany". From this you can then get a good idea of the cities and villages in the Tuscany region and start to plan your vacation.

Below you can see a map of Tuscany with cities. You can also look at a more detailed Tuscany Map here.

If you want to buy maps to take with you on your vacation try Maps.com

You can also find links to other online Maps of Tuscany & Florence at TripAdvisor.

This map was provided courtesy of Map of Italy by Tourism maps

A villa in Tuscany

I'm feeling excited today! We've booked part of our holiday - a week in villa in the Tuscan countryside.

I've been on a villa holiday before and loved it - it's a great way to combine lazy days by the pool and barbeques with day trips to towns and villages in the surrounding countryside.

A villa usually works out to be very cost effective if you're travelling in a group of 4 or more people, but if there are only two of you it can be harder to find one at a reasonable price.

If you do a search in Google on "Tuscany villas" or something similar you will be faced with hundreds of villa websites - some of them are fantastic, with great search facilities, lots of details and pictures and online availability checks. Amongst the good sites there are also lots of bad sites - some with very few pictures - why would I book a villa that I'd never seen before? Or hundreds of villas but no meaningful search facility, so you could spend hours trying to find what you want.

In the end I found a lovely 1 bedroom cottage with a huge swimming pool an hour away from Pisa and 45 minutes from Florence. The cost was pretty reasonable - £520 for 1 week. The site we used for booking was Tuscany Now

Now I just have to sort out some flights and hotels for Florence and Pisa!

Tuscany in September

Having just come back from a 2 week holiday in Cuba a couple of weeks ago I feel it's time to start thinking about the next holiday. You need something to keep you going at work - right? And I've been missing that holiday countdown that I had in big red writing in the corner of my whiteboard, for the 6 weeks before going to Cuba.

So, let the holiday countdown begin! We decided this weekend that we are definitely spending our next vacation in Tuscany.

Nothing has been booked yet, but it's looking like

- 3 nights in Florence
- A relaxing week in a villa somewhere in the countryside in Tuscany
- 1 or 2 nights in Pisa


So, as I research my holiday to Tuscany in September over the next month I'll update this blog with all the useful info that I find.

87 days to go...!!