We are travelling to Grenoble in mid November and then on to Florence. Does anyone have suggestions as to side trips by car or train - and if we visit the coast, should we stay in a B&B there, or drive back up to Florence. Also - what about the weather? Thenks so much for any ideas. m

We were there in the spring, and rented a car and drove to the small towns we visited, and very glad we rented. It all depends on what you want to do, if you want to do, but having a car made it much easier for us to get around without much planning then we would have been able to do with the train. A couple hundred pictures over at www.cordelli.info/italy if you are yearning for some.


If I were visiting the coast I would probably try to stay there, just because it's so cool to see the sunset and the ocean, then grab a bottle of wine, and not have to head back to Florence. We stayed in Florence the entire time and made day trips, which also worked out great, so either way.

Keep in mind they prevent people from driving into and out of Florence at certain times, so plan around it. Our hotel told us to tell them we were tourists and gave us their postcard to get through, and that worked all but one time, in that case we just parked, waited the hour at a cafe, then went in.

just returned from venice/florence/rome trip. I highly recommend a day or two in the country of Tuscany. Me and ms. chobby100 did not rent a car and were able to go into the country. We stayed at a place just outside of greve-in-chianti called podere il casello. http://www.tuscany.net/casello/ among other websites. We wanted a place accesible by bus and nice and low key. This was it. the place is very very nice and we only paid 120 euros including b-fast. the best place by far we stayed in Italy. It has recently been completely renovated. It has about 10 rooms. It's about 1km from Greve (the bus goes by often). Greve is a very nice tuscany postcard town. We went to this large wine cellar place where we did wine tastings. At podere they have a very nice pool and it surrounded by olive grives and many vineyards. they have a real nice pool as well. They had a wonderful prix fixe sinner for 15 euros each (including water and wine). If not greve check out radda or siena

Why don't you think of hopping in Europe (Western/Eastern) forum and lurk on more advices?