We’re taking a slight detour from the subject of Disney trip planning with this series of posts.  The other half of the Back to the Mouse trip planning duo, Nancy (who is usually the creative force behind our Instagram photos), shares her experiences traveling to Italy last fall.

Florence, Italy has been number one on my travel wishlist ever since I was in college.  I minored in Art History, and one of my all-time favorite classes was focused on Renaissance and Baroque architecture, with overviews of the most significant buildings in Italy.  After viewing slide after slide of Florence’s beautiful cathedrals and museums, I made a vow that I would someday visit.

So late last summer when my brother nonchalantly mentioned that he was headed to Florence for a business trip, I blurted out (only half joking) – “Can I come?”  Unbelievably, it all came together and I was able to take an incredible four-day trip to Florence in October 2016.

I was able to stay with my brother in a studio apartment-type room in the hills north of Florence, in a town called Fiesole.   My main travel concern would be getting to Fiesole from the airport (and back again for the return trip) as I planned to take public transportation once I was within the city.  Since we are most familiar with United’s frequent flyer program, Joe started looking for flights into Florence for the time period I would be there.  He found a saver level flight that would arrive on Sunday afternoon and depart early on Friday morning, which matched my plans perfectly.  It was a United ticketed flight that would take place on Lufthansa airlines.  The flight would depart Dulles airport, have a long stopover in Frankfort, then another flight would take me to Florence.  On Friday, I would take the flight in reverse with a much shorter layover in Frankfort.

The flight itself would cost 60,000 United miles for the round trip ticket.  We were running low on United miles, so Joe transferred 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points from our account into my United mileage account and booked the ticket.  It cost $113.16 for the taxes and surcharges.  The travel was in economy class – but for Florence, it would definitely be worth it.

Just to get an idea of the equivalent cash value of this flight, we did a quick search just to check.  Here is what we found:

While there might have been cheaper tickets available that would have gotten me to Florence, this one was perfect in terms of timing.  If we had paid cash for it, it would have cost $2687.66.  If we were paying cash, we might have looked at a few cheaper alternatives, such as leaving from or arriving into a different airport.  Because we had the ability to use airline miles, we didn’t have to. 

Since Joe took care of the flights, the major trip planning aspect I focused on was determining the best itinerary for seeing Florence’s art and architecture once I arrived in Italy.   When my trip was first confirmed, I located my class notes and textbooks from college to confirm the names and locations of the cathedrals and historic sites that I wanted to visit.  Then I did some more research – reading blog posts from locals (Girl in Florence is my favorite), reviewing guidebooks and suggested itineraries from travel companies, and visiting web sites for the museums and churches that I planned to visit.  To keep myself organized, I used a Pinterest board to bookmark and save useful articles.  

While conducting my trip research, I encountered information about the Firenze Card, the official museum pass for the city of Florence.  The Firenze Card offers priority admission to 72 museums, churches, and historic sites in Florence and its vicinity, including some of the most visited locations such as the Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia (where the David is located), the Palazzo Vecchio, the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, and major churches such as Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, and San Lorenzo.  Since I wanted to visit many of these locations, I knew it would be worthwhile to purchase and use the card.  The card also has an add-on feature, which allows you to obtain free use of city transport buses.  The one caveat is that the Firenze Card is only good for 72 hours from the time you first activate it – so I knew I would have to take this into account in my plans.  I purchased the Firenze Card from home and received a voucher that could be exchanged for the museum pass at one of several locations in Florence.  

After buying the Firenze Card, I started to get serious about putting together an itinerary.  This was important for a few reasons: 1) I really wanted to maximize my time in Florence and see as many things as possible, 2) some of the major attractions are not open on Mondays, so I needed to ensure I had a good plan for the first full day of my visit, and 3) I wanted to maximize visits to Firenze Card locations within the 72 hours after first activating the card, so I needed to pre-plan.  I created a spreadsheet with several tabs.  One tab was a schedule, which included a column for each day that I would be traveling.  I used this to generally lay out planned activities during the morning, afternoon, and evening each day of my trip.  To facilitate putting together the schedule, I had additional tabs that listed attractions (e.g., museums, churches, and restaurants) that I wanted to visit.  For each attraction on my list, I added information about the days and hours of operation, which informed my approach for putting together the high level schedule.  I used travel planning sites to estimate the duration that I would want to spend at each place.  It took me a few hours but it all came together pretty nicely.

Here’s a high level overview of what I planned for my time in Florence.  You can see it was quite the ambitious plan:

• Monday AM: visit Santo Spirito and Orsanmichele churches (these do not use the Firenze Card) and lunch in central Florence
• Monday PM: activate Firenze Card and visit Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce, and the Sculio del Cuoio (leather school)
• Monday late PM: visit San Minato al Monte and Piazzale Michelangelo
• Tuesday AM: Duomo and museum, Baptistery
• Tuesday PM: lunch at Mercado Centrale, visit San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella churches
• Tuesday late PM: event in Fiesole
• Wednesday AM: Accademia and Bargello
• Wednesday PM: lunch in the Oltrarno and visit Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens
• Wednesday late PM: visit Ponte Vecchio and Ponte Trinita
• Thursday AM: visit Uffizi Gallery (leave around noon when Firenze Card access expires)
• Thursday PM: lunch and return to Fiesole
• Thursday late PM: concert in Florence

I did use the planned itinerary a lot during the trip, and stuck to it pretty closely.  I didn’t feel constrained by the pre-planning aspect and I found that the durations I’d estimated were pretty close to the time I actually spent there.   Of course, there were some unexpected changes to the itinerary.  For example, on Monday, I discovered that the Palazzo Vecchio was closed due to an Italian government event, so I skipped that and visited later in the week.  Also, my brother was invited to a special event at the Uffizi, so I altered my plans for Monday night to go with him.   Fortunately, I’d built some slack into my schedule and was able to change my plans for other days and still see everything I wanted to.  

In future posts, I’ll talk a little bit more about the specific locations I visited and share some pictures. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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