Questions Re our Trip

knightseurope

New member
Hi there we are late 40's couple from Australia heading to Europe for the first time together so looking for any information that may be useful and help us navigate our holiday of a lifetime.

We will be in Florence for a week in May 2016 and our questions mainly relate to whether we do tours or self navigate some of the sites.

We were proposing that we do a tour of the Vasari Corridor and Uffizi Gallery however, are not sure about Accademia Gallery.

We did see a tour that was a walking tour taking in some sites including the Dumo and Accademia but I guess we were wondering if this is something we could just do ourselves? Does anyone know if Accademia has audio guides available?

We have 5 1/2 days in Florence and our plans so far are

1. Uffizi Gallery
2. Accademia / Dumo and other sites
3. A Vespa Tour in the country side
4. Just wandering around the city and enjoying the atmoshere

Can others recommend anything else we should try to see and do? We have not planned to go to Pisa so where wondering if we could/should hop a train and head to Pisa?

Any comments, constructive please :) would be appreciated.

Regards
 
Tours as opposed to do it yourself

Buongiorno,

I believe your considerations are: you love art and want to find out all the details or you appreciate art and will enjoy viewing and reading the tags. If you really want the details on the artists, their work and more than definitely go with a tour. If you are there to "appreciate" the work then you could easily do it on your own. However, a word of caution about the Vasari Corridor...a guide here would probably be interesting because it is a portrait gallery and if you don't know what you are looking at it could get a bit (boring) even if the "location" is stupendous.

You might enjoy getting a personal walking tour guide for walking around Florence - give them a theme or let them know what you are really interested in and then let them propose an itinerary. Personally, I enjoyed the museums once I had a bit of history under my belt - then the pieces inside the museums all seemed to come together.

Pisa can be a wonderful afternoon (or morning) but more than a half day is probably too much. If you were really looking to get the most out of the Square of Miracles then I suggest a walking tour to give you the lay of the land - this area is a super concentrated area of art architecture and history. (many just go for the tower - but if you were curious, there is a lot to see here) After here you could also check out Lucca....well worth the 30 minute train ride from Pisa.

Buon Viaggio

Donna Denise
 
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