Visiting Florence

Pier

New member
Hi there,

Appreciate your kind advise.

I will be staying at Florence in Dec’18 for at least 5 days. I have intention to visit these places :- Venice, La Spezia (Cinque Terre), Pisa, Lucca Assisi and Siena. Please advise how many days will be sufficient for all these cities? Do I have to stay over at every cities or can it be a day trip?

Thank you so much.
 
I will be staying at Florence in Dec’18 for at least 5 days. I have intention to visit these places :- Venice, La Spezia (Cinque Terre), Pisa, Lucca Assisi and Siena. Please advise how many days will be sufficient for all these cities? Do I have to stay over at every cities or can it be a day trip?

All can be done by way of a day trip but consider the following:

1. Cinque Terre can be seen (but maybe not appreciated fully) on a day trip but is this the location to visit in December when the weather may not be good and many shops, restaurants etc will be closed?
2. Pisa/Lucca is often done as a combination day trip. Morning in Pisa then on to Lucca for lunch and the afternoon.
3. Venice is now easily reached with direct trains offered by both Trenitalia and Italo Treni - trip takes just over 2 hours.
4. Siena - easy day trip from Florence which can be reached either by train or bus
5. Assisi - can be a day trip but transport is more complicated than any of the other destinations.

5 items in the list and this does not include any time in Florence. Either you need more than 5 days or you need to cut out one or more destinations (certainly Cinque Terre and perhaps Assisi).
 
Florence is a good base from which to visit Pisa, Lucca and Siena as day trips, they are relatively close.
Make sure to add in time in Florence as well, at least 2 days!

Cinque Terre can be done as a long day trip from Florence, with early start and late return. Check out this tour which makes it easier to do. But as craig has mentioned, December is definitely the low season and many places will be closed. I am not sure actually the tour even runs in December, now I think about it, it likely doesn't.... so you can do it on your own with train. Check out this article.

Venice can be done as well, same way, with train.
For the above, you already did 5 full days, without considering other parts of Tuscany you can see on other day trips from Florence.

Assisi is harder to reach -- I believe you'll need combo of train and bus to get there.... so maybe you can move down to Umbria and stay there a night or two at the end, adding to your minimum of 5 days.
 
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