As Yet, Untitled

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

Jess and I have just returned from a very enjoyable week in Florence (or as it is locally known, Firenze), Italy. I’m not usually one to write about trips or day-to-day activities as my creative writing is not good enough to allow me to make such a post interesting - indeed, this post will not attempt to do that either (though I will plug my photos of the holiday on Flickr!). What I will do, however, is provide some practical thoughts and advice should you be considering a similar trip, having been motivated by finding very little in the way of articles or longer discussion pieces online on this subject. Much of the available information written by the general public online is limited to two-line hotel reviews, married with ratings that are in some cases influenced strongly by small details or things that were not the fault of the person eventually providing the service.

Arrival and accommodation

So, to begin: the basics. We flew from Gatwick with BA, having booked the hotel and flight together about two weeks in advance of the trip on lastminute.com without hiccup. The BA flight was around an additional £40 compared to a “no frills” airline; we picked this flight because it was at a time by which we could actually get to the airport, though also I was quite happy to fly on a plane that did not have plastic seats and cheesey music, as well as have an opportunity to collect Executive Club points. There is nothing much of interest to say about the flight except, perhaps, that we regretted not checking in on-line as the choice of seats on arrival at the airport was significantly poorer than it could have been several hours earlier and we had an aisle separating us on the outgoing journey.

We chose a local boutique hotel, the Hotel Athenaeum, as our residence for the week. This is a four-star hotel and, in my opinion, is worthy of such a rating - the staff are pleasant and competent, and the rooms and interior are decorated to a good standard as well as being kept perfectly clean, exuding a modern finish. Having said that, there is little that is exceptional about the hotel despite everything being very good, apart from the price we paid and the very nice attached restaurant; it is good value and definitely worth considering. It is well located, around 10 minutes walk away from the Duomo (which signifies the closest main central area of the city) and around 15-20 minutes from the train station. Whilst not surprising, a disappointment of the hotel is the lack of swimming pool, despite it (if I recall correctly, as we did not explore this facility) having a putting green. It has the usual room service, small gym, wifi, Ethernet (which we didn’t use) - both methods of network access are free upon request - and phone, as well as a poorly occupied (dead, in fact) bar (despite having a reasonable selection of nice cocktails and other drink and snack options). Overall, a very good choice (and don’t let the drab exterior put you off or concern you on arrival, the inside is much nicer!).

A brief note on language: unlike natively English-speaking countries (for the most part), Italy and indeed many European countries are multi-lingual. In most major areas you will find that the locals know enough English for you to get by. However, it is only polite to learn how to say hello, thank-you, and good-bye, as speaking these words (as way of introduction or exit) in Italian will make a good impression.

Transport

Altogether we stayed in Italy for seven nights, flying back early on the eighth day. We travelled to Pisa and to Rome for a day each, and stayed in Florence for the remaining period. Our decision to stay in Florence was partly due to it being fairly central, allowing access to these places by train as we did not hire a car. Had we hired a car, we might have chosen to stay somewhere a little smaller such as a nearby Tuscan village.

As we didn’t have use of a car we made good use of public transport. The train system is very accessible and from Florence provides routes to Pisa, Rome, and many other destinations on a frequent basis, even on Sundays. The queues to book tickets are very long, but you can easily use (in English and other languages) one of the automated ticket machines and pay using cash or credit/debit card, including to make reservations on the national services. The local trains (which in our case were used for the Pisa to Florence trip and between Florence and Pisa Aerporto via Pisa Centrale) are a little old and stuffy but very good value; a single ticket from Florence to Pisa, a one hour journey, will set you back only €5.60. Unlike the British rail system, there is no discount for return trips (or booking in advance, at least for the regional services), so you will always book two singles. For local trains, there is no issue with arriving on the day and getting the ticket when you are about to depart. The Eurostar is a slightly different matter - it’s advisable where possible to book at least several hours if not a day or two in advance as tickets for these trains can sell out. The Eurostar (which can also, of course, be used for international journeys) is significantly more expensive: a trip to Rome from Florence on the fastest train would set you back around €36 for a journey of around 90 minutes. Using the faster trains is definitely the way to go, though, if you are only visiting places such as Rome for the day - this maximises time at the destination, allowing you to find your feet and get around the places you want to visit. Unfortunately, the information online about the Italian trains (at least that provided in English) is not the best - the above summary should help you out here but note that there is also plenty of information provided within the major stations themselves (at least for Florence and Rome).

Things to do

The Uffizi

On the topic of selecting sights to see, we bought the The Rough Guide to Italy* and it was invaluable for helping us to put together an itinerary, if less useful with regards to restaurant and bar choices (there are so many to choose from that the book lists only a small percentage and time can be wasted finding these places when there are many good options around). Note also that the book is occasionally out of date with regards prices and entry times (as can only be expected) so its worth checking up specifics online if possible. In particular, we noted that some museums and attractions offer special entrance prices to those under certain ages (some were 25, some 30), up to half price, so do take ID with you if you are of the right age. This also applies to the Roma pass (although only a €2 discount was provided at the time of writing), which is well worth buying as it makes public transport in Rome free that would otherwise cost, for example, €4 per subway trip, and allows you free entry to the first two sights you visit, including a queue jump, and discounts on the rest. We saved around €8 each even with only a day of using the pass, which is valid for three days.

Speaking of queues, they are often very long, unbelievably so in fact, for the most popular attractions. The queues for the Vatican in particular are just impossible at the height of the season and you would be wasting your time to bother with them (not to mention being forced to stand in the sun for many hours, potentially) - instead, book a guided tour online in advance to get both a queue jump and the benefit of a knowledgeable guide who will be able to show you the best parts of the museum. Similarly for the main museums in Florence - the Uffizi and Accademia - booking in advance is worthwhile; here you can choose just to reserve tickets for a particular time and get an audio headset guide on arrival. Having reservations in all these cases means you can use the time you would otherwise have spent queuing to either visit attractions that are less busy, or to sleep in! Costs for booking in advance can vary; at the time of writing if you queued (probably for around 2 hours) to get into the Uffizi you would have paid €10 (or €5 if 25 or under) for entrance; booking in advance adds €4 to this price and in our case we actually booked on the same morning we visited meaning we probably entered the museum quicker than if we had immediately started queueing. For the Vatican, our tour (with TickItaly.com, who provided a good tour despite poor customer service - they never sent us a confirmation email that they claim is required even though it wasn’t) was around €45, whereas had we queued we would have paid around €28 and lost three or so hours of time queuing. Beware of touts selling fraudulent tickets at the Vatican site itself, however.

One thing to note when visiting buildings of religious importance, particularly cathedrals, is that you will expected to have covered shoulders and knees and this varies from being ignored to strictly enforced, so despite the heat it is worth carrying the necessary clothing as you may not be permitted entrance otherwise.

All in all, there is plenty to do, at least around the places we visited, and you could easily fill more than a week full of activities and museum visits. Check opening times in your guide book or online, as some things are closed on Mondays or have limited opening hours on Sunday or over the weekend. The guide book that I suggested above, and probably most others, will provide a good summary of the various things to do. It also has maps of the city centres, which are very useful for locating the tourist information office where you will be able to obtain a bigger, better map of the city centre for free (we did this in Florence, Pisa, and Rome).

Money

In terms of finances, we got a good deal by booking online and getting hotel and flights together, and for spending some time to find better prices for tours - these are often booked through agents who don’t actually run the tour yet charge massive mark-ups, for example we bought (not necessarily the cheapest) tickets to the Accademia via an agency through the hotel front desk and paid €18 per ticket, yet at the time of writing this (together with the €14 ticket for a non-discounted Uffizi ticket including reservation fee) would have cost £47.81 with city-discovery.com, which with the exchange rate at 1.27 is equivalent to €60.71, almost twice the price! All in all, if, like us, you intend to be busy most days and eat out in the evening then reserving around £100-£120 per day total except for accommodation and flights is probably wise. You could get by on less if you prefer, and certainly the most expensive items on our itinerary were food and travel via Eurostar to Rome, the former of which we could have done more cheaply depending on choice of restaurant, and the latter is of course optional. An evening meal for two can range in price, depending on whether you have wine and where you eat, from €25 upwards, probably averaging around €50-€60. It can be quite hard finding unique places to eat each night, as many of the restaurants aimed at the tourists are identical except for their name.

Summary and links

I hope this article was useful in helping you to plan your own trip; here are some links and snippets of information you may find useful:

Town Hall Clock

• The Rough Guide to Italy (Rough Guide Travel Guides)* - the guide book we used and found very helpful and informative and covers all the major regions of the country, which is useful if you plan to travel;
• city-discovery.com - not a cheap place to book tours but a reasonable place to start looking at what there is to do; once you have found something interesting, use Google to search for key phrases and you may find identical tours cheaper through other agencies;
• tickitaly.com - another tour agency, we used this to book tickets for the Vatican;
• lastminute.com - we booked our flights and hotel here;
• ba.com - print out your itinerary, add a frequent flyer number, and check-in online;
• trenitalia.it - the site of the Italian rail system where you can look up train times, etc.;
• GrayLine - we book an excellent wine tasting excursion to the Chianti region with this company;
• Expedia - an alternate place for finding hotels and tours, but remember that sites like this (along with lastminute.com) search only a limited set of operators so, for example, might not be able to help with last minute bookings for trips - in this case, Google is your friend!