Tuscany - food, wine, Renaissance

Believe the gushing superlatives - Tuscany is amazing! It's true!

Being a tourist there can be hell at times, that's also true. Queues, crowds and rip-off prices are, I suppose, an occupational hazard. But it's all worth it, Florence is like no other city I've seen in terms of beauty, history and all that art. It's everywhere.



Three tips:

1) Do a walking tour of Florence. We went with www.italy.artviva.com's Original Florence Walk (€25) and had a great time -- seriously knowledgeable guide. Florence is a city you can feel out of place in if you're not being herded around by a tour guide. We also did the www.italy.artviva.com tour of the Uffizi Gallery as we weren't feeling up to tackling the museum's legendary long lines (I read that a 5 to 6 hour wait is not unheard of). But although the guide was, again, very knowledgeable, I thought at €39 (including entry fees) it was a bit expensive.



2) If you go inside the Baptistery in Pisa's Miracle Square, don't bother paying €1 to listen to a history of the Baptistery on one of the ancient telephone-audioguide-box-things. It is incomprehensible.



3) Take the Time Out guide if eating and drinking is one of your holiday priorities. I've used a lot of guidebooks in my time, and found that Time Out consistently has the best, most up-to-date restaurant listings. The places it recommends have always been excellent value for money and packed with locals. For sightseeing and history, I think the Footprint Travel Guides are really well written, but Footprint doesn't cover as many destinations as the Rough Guide or Lonely Planet.





4) Go and see the lovely sculptures pictured above and many amazing frescoes at the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa's Miracle Square.

5) If you're a coffee drinker, stand up! Sitting at a table to drink your latte will incur a whopper of a service charge. So drink it standing at the bar like the Italians do and pay around €1.50 instead of €6 or more.