Travel Tips

There are some new traffic lights up that let you know when it is okay to drive into the ZTL. The pictures below are from the entrance in front of the Biblioteca Nazionale (I am not how many ZTL entrances have these lights installed). The current mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, has announced new plans to make the whole ZTL situation simpler and more friendly to tourism. We'll see how that goes - for now the signs are a decent start.

Here is the location of the above sign:

View Biblioteca Nazionale ZTL Entrance in a larger map

Last week was the closing to street traffic of the areas around the Duomo that weren't already "pedonale" or pedestrian only streets. Below are a few photos taken while standing in the intersection of Via de'Cerretani and Via de'Martelli. It feels really odd to be able to walk in the middle of these streets knowing how much traffic passed by every day. This week they also took down most of the stanchions and chains that were in the area to control the flow of traffic and keep people from getting run over! I still think that some of this whole thing was just a pro-active PR attempt by the mayor to gain some easy goodwill before the tram construction starts - this is the exact route that the tracks are supposed to come down from the station on the way to Piazza San Marco.

Visiting the Vasari Corridor is something I have always wanted to do but haven't because of the rather prohibitive price (usually somewhere around €90 per person) and the need to go with a tour group. Recently I was tipped off by a post on the LonelyPlanet Italy forum that the corridor was actually open to the public (which is contrary to the "status quo").

The official website of the "Corridoio Vasariano" is here: http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/musei/vasariano/. It is well hidden on the site, and only in Italian. On that page they have the details of the opening dates and times (see the box), as well as a phone number. We tried that number for 2 days and only got a busy signal. So we went by the Uffizi ticket window and asked. We were give another number that was pulled from some papers that seemed to be well hidden under a telephone. For some reason, the fact that you can visit the corridor is not something the Italians are publicizing.

The Vasari Corridor will be open to the public until the 18th of December. When it reopens is anyone's guess at this point, though I will inquire about that when we visit. If you want to try to make a reservation, call immediately - the Italian country code is 39, and the number to call is 055 294883. Note that the number given in the box and on their website is not correct! (It may work - but it didn't for us). The 4:30 time is already fully booked, but maybe you can get one of the other times. When we called a couple of days ago the first available day was November 19th, so if you are planning a visit between then and December 18th you may be in luck. The best part - tickets are only €10 plus a €4 reservation fee.

Since we are Friends of the Uffizi (I will post about this soon) our entrance is actually free, and we will have to pay the reservation fee on the day we visit. Good luck!

The Department of Tourism in Florence has a new bus and road map out to help people get in and out of Florence and the surrounding areas. Of course you have to get one at the tourist office, which sort of makes it a Catch-22 situation. Anyway - it has a ton of good info on it, like this little map below showing the locations of the bus stations near the train station:

And here are some important links for rail and bus transportation into and out of Florence and the surrounding area:

Trenitalia: http://www.trenitalia.com

Ataf: http://www.ataf.net

Sita: http://www.sitabus.it (Arezzo, San Gimignano, Siena, Volterra, The Mall)

Cap: http://www.capautolinee.it (Prato, I Gigli)

Lazzi: http://www.lazzi.it (Arezzo, Lucca, Montecatini Terme, Prato, Viareggio)

Piubus: http://www.piubus.it

Autolinee Toscane: http://www.autolineetoscane.it

Here is a map from Google showing roughly the same area:

Florence Santa Maria Novella (Firenze SMN is how you will see it on train schedules) is Florence's main train station. The station handles more than 400 trains and a 160,000 people a day! Many bus stations (SITA, CAP for Prato and west of Florence) are nearby and there are also ATAF (local Florence line - usually orange) buses to be caught on either side of the station. A lot of car rental agents are just a few blocks away, many on Via Ognissanti. There is a car park underneath the station as well, and there is a taxi stand outside the station with an endless supply of white cabs.

You can find a list of information and usual services available (pharmacy, food, post, luggage, etc.) at the station here, and you can purchase tickets (or at least plan your itinerary) on the main Ferrovie website (there are reports that you can not buy tickets on this site without an Italian credit card).

From Firenze SMN you are about an hour and 40 minutes to Rome, 2 hours and change to Milan, less than 3 hours to Venice (on most trains), and 3 to 5 hours to Naples.

Inside the old city walls of Florence (well, what used to be the walls and is now the viale or large avenue circling the city), driving is limited to registered vehicles (city residents) except for a small area around the train station (Santa Maria Novella). Florentines call this the ZTL, or "Zona Traffico Limitato". It is important to know this to avoid receiving HUGE traffic tickets by driving your car into the center of Florence. On the map below (click it for a larger version), you can see the ZTL entry points (red and blue "T"s) and the various zones by letter (which correspond to where residents can park). You can drive into the center with a rental car if you are staying at a hotel, but the hotel must let the traffic police know your license plates, etc. And if you do drive in, make sure to use one of the blue "T" spots, not the red - even with a residents permit to enter, you can't enter at the red "T" signs (I now know - it was an expensive lesson).

So remember - if you are just coming to Florence as stop on a day trip, or you are staying at a self catering apartment (i.e. not a hotel), you can not legally drive into (most of) the center, although personally we have heard stories of people doing so and not getting tickets, if you do the fines are steep and they are getting better and better at finding you and making sure you pay. In any case, this is something to be aware of and be careful of! Study the map closely and you will see there are a few ins and outs (Sundays are open, as are nights from 7:30 PM to 7:30 AM, but not in the summer, etc.). Lastly, the light blue shaded streets are "zona pedonale" or pedestrian zones, and you shouldn't be driving on them at all!

The best place to exchange - change money (cash) in Florence is with Carlo (or his son Marco) in their tiny shop (actually just a window you walk up to) the size of a closet that is tucked into the side of the Uffizi. They have been changing money in this spot for 40 years, and have the best rates (really!) in town. Carlo is a real Florentine and a great guy - he speaks Italian, English and Japanese - and will always take the time to share an anecdote or two. They are always just 2 or 3 pennies off the published exchange rates, with no extras, no commission added, etc., while many other exchange shops have a spread of 5 or 7 cents - and tack on a commission fee. Cash and travelers checks welcome - he will also let you charge cash on your credit card (they do take 5% on this type of transaction - but it can be really handy). He is open early to at least 7:00 PM, every day. On Via della Ninna (little street on the south side of the Palazzo Vecchio that leads to Via dei Neri if you care coming from Piazza Signoria). Follow the link below for a map.

The Florence Airport (FLR) is named "Amerigo Vespucci Airport" but is also known by many people by its old name "Peretola" (many road signs still have this name on it, more history of Peretola here), which is the area where the airport is located. The airport is about 5 kilometers from the city center. There is now a fixed taxi fare of € 20 (nights, Sundays, and baggage are extra) from the airport to the center. There is also a bus shuttle run by ATAF from the airport to the main train station (Firenze, Santa Maria Novella) every half hour from early morning to 8:00 PM.

This is a small airport, with one runway (which was recently expanded to handle larger planes) - there is a larger one at Pisa, Galileo Galilei, which is 80 kilometers away. Florence Airport has a bar/café, a duty free shop, and a currency exchange. The airport handles about 2 million passengers a year.

Amerigo Vespucci Airport
Via del Termine 11
50127 Florence
Information on flights (24 hours): 39 055 3061700 Ext. 702

"These pickpockets are very, very skilled," said Michael Ma, a consul at the U.S. Consulate in Florence, Italy. They offer to hoist your bag on the train and then take off with the bag, just as the train is pulling out. They ask you to help with their baby and then, while you're preoccupied with the child, quickly grab your bag (even snipping the shoulder strap with scissors). They sidle up to you in a crowd and reach in to an open purse. They will even snatch your purse from your restaurant chair while you're sitting there talking. "They take what they can without getting caught and move on," says Ma, who gives talks on the subject to some of the 10,000 American students who study in Florence every year."

There is more here.

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ATAF is the local bus company in Florence - their ubiquitous orange buses are everywhere - some are big, some are small, some run on natural gas, and some run on electricity. From their website:

"ATAF, Azienda Trasporti Area Fiorentina, represents a consortium of nine municipalities: Bagno a Ripoli, Calenzano, Campi Bisenzio, Fiesole, Florence, Impruneta, Scandicci, Sesto Fiorentino, and Vaglia, that cover a total territorial surface area of 538 square km with a population of about 600,000 residents."

This story (we mentioned it a few weeks ago) has now made in into the NY Times:

"Tourists who want to sit in a cafe in the Piazza San Marco or visit the Uffizi may soon have to pay more for their hotel rooms. A measure, expected to be passed by the Italian Parliament at the end of the year, will allow cities to charge tourists a daily “bed tax” of up to five euros, or $6.30, per person in 2007."

I generally agree with this statement, "I think as long as the money goes into improvements no one should complain about the extra charge," - if you have enough money to visit Italy an extra $6 a day shouldn't be a big deal, but of course the burden falls on everyone, including the student and budget traveler. If it was a percentage of the room price, it would be more fair in my eyes.

From the Star Ledger:

"From John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Delta is adding nonstop flights next year to Florence, Italy, and Bucharest, Romania. It also will begin flying non-stop to Shannon, Ireland, and will add a second flight to London. More flights are planned from the airline's Atlanta hub."

I wonder what the prices will be like...

The always too hip for me Gridskipper has a post up about the tiny Residenza Santo Spirito. Gridskipper just drives me crazy though - the whole "too cool" attitude is one thing, but then you have to suffer the misspellings and bad punctuation - not to mention the sketchy, factually challenged information. They need some tighter editing.

"Finnair launches flights to the Tuscan sun

Finnair will begin flights to sunny Tuscany on Friday 12 May. Flights will be operated directly from Helsinki to the heart of the area, Pisa International Airport on Airbus A320 aircraft. Tuscany is already Finnair's fourth scheduled destination in Italy. The other destinations are Rome, Milan and Venice in the summer season."

More here.

My brother emailed and said he has a friend who's taking the train from Rome to Florence for the day. She was looking for suggestions about the best way to spend one day in Florence, where to go, where to eat, etc. Here's what I said:

It's hard to give advice to someone I don't know because I don't know what type of traveller they are, but if it was me I would:

1) take the 5 minute walk from the train station to the Duomo. Here you could: a) go into the cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), b) climb to the top of the Dome, c) climb to the top of the Campanile or d) go into the Baptistry --- my choice would be to go into the Baptistry which is just beautiful with bronze doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti.

Jet2 has announced more flights to Italy, including Tuscany:

Pisa (Florence) will also join the growing list of Italian destinations, with its inaugural service leaving from Manchester and Newcastle International on the 25th May and from Leeds Bradford, Belfast International and Edinburgh Airport on the 27th.

I am not sure from the story if they mean Pisa airport or Florence though - there is more here.

Travel tip of the day: You are flying into Rome Fiumicino - Leonardo da Vinci airport. To get to Roma Termini take the Leonardo Express train. Cost is €9.50 each way, it takes about 35 minutes and the train runs from about 6:30 AM to 11:30 PM every day.

If English is your mother tongue or what you read best make sure you pick up a copy of The Florentine when you are here. They publish every two weeks and have a great calendar that includes movie times and all kinds of art, music and cultural events both in Florence and greater Tuscany. They also do an interview in each issue with a an interesting Florentine, and have some original articles and a small but growing classified section, along with short snippets of daily local and national news. Their website is not exactly friendly (they only publish PDF files) but might be good to download and browse off-line and/or print.

I put together a list of hotels near us (Piazza Santa Croce) for some family members who were planning on visiting. I thought I’d post it in case anyone is looking for lodging in the area. I’m also including my very brief notes/comments about each one. Some I've actually visited or walked by, but some I just researched on the web – either way, these are some I would recommend. They vary in price range from reasonably expensive to slightly budget (although that’s hard to find here in Florence). The links mostly go to other hotel booking sites, but some go directly to the hotels own pages. Here they are...

We just came across a news article about staying in a convent as an inexpensive alternative to a hotel. The cat is out of the bag I guess. The Santa Susanna website has a page listing convents where you can get a room in several Italian cities, including Florence.

New TV show, "Passport To Europe":

"In Florence, Italy, Brown discovers a great hotel in the centre of the city, and also finds a perfect spot to escape the crowds."

Not exactly specific to Florence but good news:

"easyJet, Europe's leading low-cost airline today announced it would significantly expand its services in Italy and introduce a new base at Milan's Malpensa Airport. Malpensa will be the airline's 16th base in Europe and first in Italy."

Here is the site for European maps and driving directions: http://www.viamichelin.co.uk

Maps, driving directions, estimated fuel costs, toll costs, weather and traffic reports, etc. A really nice site with tons of useful information. If you register (free) you get more options, including restaurant listings.

We are here in terminal 4 at JFK - we leave around 10:00 PM. I just opened up my laptop and there are no less than 4 Wi-Fi networks to be found. I am coming to you courtesy of Swiss Air, for free. More later, if possible, or tomorrow from Italy.

Anthony

You can find plenty of forecasts on the web for the weather in Florence, but I have been searching for some information on the general climate conditions from season to season. While it seems a bit dated and the page has some broken links, this is about the best information I have found so far:

"To begin with winter (Early December-Early March), Florence alternates between crisp clear and cold wet days; daytime temperatures are generally above freezing, while it can dip below freezing at night, especially if the sky is clear. When a storm comes through it is generally a few degrees warmer, getting up to 6-7 °C (about 40 F). Snow is rare; the last time it stuck for more than a day in town was 1985, when the Arno also froze, for the first time since 1929. Outside of Florence temperatures are generally 2-3 °C cooler, and what comes down as rain in town often comes down as snow in the hills (this makes clear winter days after storms quite beautiful). So, if you will be here in winter, you will want to bring warm clothes, rain gear, good all-weather shoes, and an umbrella."

There is more here

The mother of all European travel websites is Durant Imboden's Europe For Visitors. With over 500,000 visitors a month and over 4,000 pages of original content, this is one of the most authoritative sites on the web. He was kind enough to check out our fledgling effort here and has included a link to Florence Journal from his extensive Florence section.

We just heard back from Palazzo Antellesi that they could provide a mini van from the airport in Bologna to the Pallazo for €160. We haven't heard back from either of the other companies we tried to contact about this, so we went ahead and confirmed the ride with the Palazzo. At about $200 door to door it seems well worth it - remember we have two small children and will probably have 12 pieces of luggage. This cuts out the bus ride to the train station in Bologna, and then the taxi ride to the Palazzo from the station in Florence.

Anthony