Buses from Siena to San Giminano & Montapulciano

FionaC

New member
I am planning my second trip to Tuscany in 2013 and I would like to be a bit more adventurous this time. I am a mature age female and I will be travelling alone. I have read through some forum posts regarding buses to and from Siena/ San Giminano/ Montipulciano, but I am still confused as the links posted do not seem to go to the correct website/s.
Can anyone give me concise information about whether buses run from Siena to SG & M. and where I can access timetables, I dont speak Italian but I have managed with other timetables in Italian in the past.
I plan to stay in Cortona for at least 5-6 days and then maybe move to Siena for a few days and do day trips from both places. I have thought about hiring a car whilst in Cortona, but as I am Australian and we drive on the other side of the road in RH drive cars, I feel this may not be wise and may just make the whole thing much more stressful than it needs to be. Any advice would be welcome.
I have stayed in Cortona before and I an confident about trains to and from there from Rome & Florence.

Also wish I had found this website before I went last time!!
Thanks in advance for any reply.
 
Buses to San Gimignano & Montapulciano from Siena

Ciao Fiona,

From Siena, the right website to use for bus schedules is this one:
http://www.busfox.com/timetable/
but it sometimes doesn't work or gives error messages.

The same bus company offers a big PDF file with ALL bus schedules you can search and print out.
Here it is: http://www.trainspa.it/train04/extraurbano.pdf

From Siena to Montepulciano, take bus 112/A (A= andata, going there, R= ritorno, coming back) or bus 139. Check out page 17 onward for that bus line.

From Siena to San Gimignano take bus 130 - here is the schedule: http://www.trainspa.it/EXTRAURBANO/130A.pdf and return times - http://www.trainspa.it/EXTRAURBANO/130R.pdf

As for driving, you don't have to rent a car if you're comfortable using trains and buses to the places you want to go... just know that many places will be off limits if the schedules don't meet your expectations. Most hill towns and villages in Tuscany are not that well served with public transport (having maybe 1-2 buses per day) but you can definitely plan an itinerary that will meet your expectations.

Cortona is not exactly central to make many day trips across all of Tuscany, you'll have to limit your day trips to the area nearby.... if you check the large PDF file above, you'll see that you can also get to Montepulciano from Cortona and not just from Siena.... as well as to other of the smaller towns in the area. I'd definitely recommend a visit to Arezzo if you didn't make it there before, and to Sansepolcro and Anghiari and Castiglion Fiorentino, all in the area. Cortona is almost on the border with Umbria so you might also want to head south to Perugia and Assisi.

These are just some ideas, let us know if you have any other questions! And have fun planning your trip :)
 
Lourdes... Thank you so much for your comprehensive reply. I will visit all the links and bookmark them all in my "Trip" file.
I will definitely look into visiting the other small towns you suggested and there are a couple of places I have read about in Umbria that I would like to visit.
Actually I would just like to move to Italy for a year and travel all over!!
Thanks again.
Fiona
 
enjoy planning your trip!

You're very welcome! And if you have any other questions, feel free to post. I like to help out and offer as much info as I can, when I can :)

Living a whole year and traveling across Italy would be a great experience, life changing! I came to Florence to study for 6 months, met my now husband and eventually made the permanent move :D So definitely life changing for me :)

All the best in planning your trip, this stage is such an important part of the trip as well :)
 
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