Europe · Italy

Tuscany

Florence, Siena and the Chianti vineyards in six days. By coach from Bratislava, no transfers, no rushing.

We have been running Tuscany since 2011 and the route has settled into a shape that works. Day one is the coach transfer through Austria and Slovenia, with an overnight stop near Venice. In the morning we continue to Montecatini Terme, our base for the week. Florence is an hour away by train, Pisa half an hour by car, so nobody has to repack a suitcase every night.

Florence gets a full day. We book timed entry to the Uffizi and the Accademia weeks in advance, which saves the two-hour queues you get in July. The afternoon is free for Ponte Vecchio and the San Lorenzo market. The following day we drive to Siena, where the centre is closed to cars and the walk uphill is steeper than most people expect. On the way back we stop in San Gimignano and its fifteen surviving towers.

One day always belongs to the countryside. The family winery we use in Chianti Classico near Greve knows our group by name: five wines, a lunch cooked by the owner's mother, and a cellar that has not been redecorated for tourists. The owner will tell you exactly why he lost half his harvest in 2017. The tour closes with a stop in Pisa and an overnight drive home. We stay in a three-star hotel with breakfast; rooms are twins and the single supplement is 95 euros for the whole stay. The group is led by Lucia, who lived in Italy for eight years and knows where people actually eat lunch in each town. The coach is ours, with a Slovak driver, and stops every two and a half hours.

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