Florence is a beautiful city in Tuscany, Italy, which has become a famous home for some of Italy’s most famous and beautiful pieces of art. It’s also full of winding alleys and cobbled streets, with lovely little trattorias and osterias tucked away from the main sites, and part of the fun of being there is searching for good food in restaurants that aren’t overrun by tourists. Being Italian, the food is, of course, almost guaranteed to be wonderful, and the restaurants are well stocked with the most famous wine of the region: Chiani. And very nice it is, too. Florence is quaint and chilled out, and a lovely place to stroll around, feeling at peace in the beautiful environment.
Getting there... and around once you’re there.
By Plane
Thank heavens for budget airlines. EasyJet, Ryanair, ThompsonFly and several others all fly to either Florence or Pisa airport.
You’ll either fly into Florence (Amerigo Vespucci, FLR) airport or Pisa airport (Galileo Galilei, PSA). If you fly into Florence airport, you won’t have any problems. There’s really no need to get a taxi, and they’re very expensive in any case. Instead, you can get the airport shuttle bus directly from the airport to Santa Maria Novella train station in the centre of the city. It goes roughly every hour and costs only 4 Euros. If you fly into Pisa airport, you can get the Terravision bus into the SMN station, which costs 8 Euros and theoretically takes 1 hour and 10 minutes, but actually takes about an hour and a half. Or you can get the train into the centre of Florence. The airport has a train station and the train will take you into SMN station, which takes about an hour and 15 minutes, but they only go from the airport every two hours. You can also get more frequent trains from Pisa’s Central Train Station, but this involves getting the bus into the city centre, and it’s all getting to be a bit too much more hassle than it’s worth, isn’t it? Just get the bus. It’s recommended to go on their website and book your bus tickets, though. A plane full of people will more than fill up a bus.
By Train
If you get the train into Florence, you will come into Santa Maria Novella Station. Nice and central, no problems.
Getting Around
Walk! It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be staying so far away from the Old Town that you will be unable to walk in. In the unlikely event of this happening, by all means ask your hotel staff which bus goes into town, but Florence is really rather compact, and you should be able to walk it. Bear in mind it’s cobbled streets, though – high or pointy heels are not the best idea.
What you really should do when you’re there
Because they are major tourist sites for a reason.
The Uffizi Gallery
Between the Piazza della Signoria and the River Arno you will find the incredible Uffizi Gallery. It wasn’t actually intended to be an Art Gallery – in fact, the buildings used to be offices – so you’ll find the layout pretty weird. Dozens of rooms lead off the main walkway, and among them you’ll find the Leonardo da Vinci room (a bit of a misnomer, really, since it’s more like a Leonardo wall, or even the Leonardo 2/3rds of a wall) and the Botticelli room. It’s likely to be packed for this very reason, so take your time, mosey around and don’t feel in a rush. Italians don’t rush.
The Galleria dell’ Academia
So much smaller than you think it’s going to be. You’ll find this north of the Duomo in the vague direction of the San Lorenzo Piazza. It really is a very select collection of both Renaissance paintings and sculptures. Size, however, doesn’t matter – or rather, only the size of the most famous sculpture in the place does. The Academia is home to Michelangelo’s David, and people flock, quite rightly, from all over the world to see it. The detail is incredible and the sheer size of the thing is overwhelming.
The Duomo
In the centre of the Old Town you will find the Duomo – Florence’s giant Cathedral. The churches of Florence lack the ornate, ostentatious glitziness of Rome, but instead they have imposing, swooping arches, clean and simple lines and elegantly palatial decoration. The Duomo is incredible from the outside, with its marble exterior of pink and green, dating back to the 1500s. You can walk the 463 steps up to the top of the Cupola and get some beautiful views of the city. The Duomo is free to enter (as it should be), but the Cupola costs 6 Euros to climb.
Boboli Gardens
These beautiful gardens, with a few fountains and bodies of water, are largely very hilly, and when you head up the hill you’ll see why. The view from the top of the gardens is lovely. Boboli Gardens feature Pitti Palace, the former home of the Medici, which is filled with the extensive family art collection. It’s nice to chill out in the gardens and stroll around the Palace. Take a picnic.
NOTE: The queues for all the Galleries in Florence are ridiculously long, and you can easily be waiting for a couple of hours to get in, even in March or October. What a waste of time. Instead, call at least a day in advance to the ticket office which will allow you to reserve your tickets for 3 Euros each. The office deals with all the galleries of Florence, so you can book all the ones you want to see in one go. Don’t forget to bring your reservation number to pick up your tickets. You can then walk past the queues. The number of the booking office is: +39 055 294 883, and you DO need to include the zero for Italy. Don’t worry, they speak English.
Where to eat... Mmmm
Remember that Italian dining is generally meant to be taken seriously, so set aside a few hours. As always in tourist cities, the restaurants surrounding the big sites are generally extortionate and not the best quality anyway. Here are a few cheap and cheerful places that do good Italian food with good service, at good prices. What more could you ask?
La Ghiotta - Via Pietapiana 7/R
A little far out, and a casual place that generally has a lot of locals there for dinner. Not a fine dining vibe, but by heaven they do they most tender and delicious Bistecca Fiorentina. Mmmm. Don’t go too late – they like to close by 11pm-11.30pm, which is ludicrously early for Italy. Friendly staff, though. A litre of house wine is 5 Euros, but you can guess from that about the quality of it.
Zio Gigi - Via F. Portinari, 7/R
So lovely, and tucked away down a side street off a side street off the Duomo, yet not very far away – the best kind. The staff are particularly kind and friendly and the standard of English is high. The fillet steak with green peppercorn sauce is delicious.
Il Latini – Via dei Palchetti, 6/r
Generally always bustling and it’s quite friendly and informal, with communal dining. Service is very efficient. And the food is outstanding.
Il Portale - Via Luigi Alamanni 29r
A lovely restaurant on the west side of the Old Town, fairly close to the SMN station, if you’ve only just arrived and need to eat immediately, or, conversely, if you are leaving very soon and don’t want to make do with the sandwich that the airline grudgingly hands over. The food is excellent and the price is very good. Enjoy.
Drinking and nightlife
As with most Western European cities, binge drinking just isn’t as popular as in the UK or Australia. Chilling out with your friends, making a bottle of red last and people-watching is more the norm. However, you can indeed find some good bars. Here’re a few suggestions of where to look:
Via de Benci
If you fancy doing a bit of a bar crawl of an evening, you could do worse than walking along the river, past the Uffizi passage and turn up Via de Benci. If you follow the road up as it turns into Via Giuseppe Verdi, you will follow a line of bars, mostly on the left hand side. This can keep you going for a while.
Le Volpiand L' Uve - Piazza de' Rossi 1
A lovely, traditional wine bar, where you can get to grips with the best wines of the region and still look cool. Nice to be in the piazza, watching the world go by.
Girasol Latin Bar - Via del Romito 1
All about the Latin music. This place has a great ambience, to say nothing of its wonderful cocktails, yummy antipasto to nibble on and groooove. Good times, very nice.