I suppose you have some reasons for giving so many more days to Florence than to Rome otherwise I'd give Rome a few more days. - there's so much to see. As it's winter it may not be very pleasant driving around the lovely Tuscan countryside visiting the medieval towns and days are shorter. Big - and historical- towns offer more opportunities to avoid bad weather.

However there are some nice towns you can visit having Florence as a base:

Pisa with its leaning tower, Lucca, Siena, San Gimignano, Volterra, Arezzo, Cortona... You can reach some of these by train. On Christmas Day and New Year's Day you'll probably find many museums closed and surely shops.

Have a nice time!

P:S Typical Christmas cakes in Tuscany: Panforte, Panpepato and Cavallucci. Don't miss them

Hello vm57:

I agree with Girella. Why so many days in Florence?. I would suggest to you that in addition to all these towns of Tuscany, could visit Verona, when visiting Venice and Siena and Assisi, before coming to Rome. They are small towns that you can see in only a day and assure you are worth.

Enjoy!!!

Because we are in Italy for such a short period of time and the true purpose of my visit is to spend Christmas with my children who are traveling and actually meeting me there, we thought we would make Florence our base. So rather than racing around all over the place we hope to experience life in the city of Florence while visiting other places by train in the form of day trips.

Thank you for ur feedback. It is greatly appreciated.

Can you give me some insight into places that are manageable by train at this time of the year, namely winter?

When you want to do some day trips while staying in Florence I highly reccomend you www.funintuscany.com . You can also take a cooking class in the Chianti area.

1/2 hour away from Florence there is a famous spa town called Montecatini Terme http://www.montecatini.it/english/

You can work out time and costs here:

www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/index.jsp…

By train:

Arezzo. Ihr, Cortona is on the same line: add 20min, whereas if you continue on to Terontola ( the stop after Cortona) and change train you can go to Assisi - the town of San Francesco. From Terontola to Assisi is 1/2 hr journey and it's really worthwhile!!

Bologna is a 1hr journey, Siena -25 min, Pisa -1hr 15min, Lucca 1hr 10m, Montecatini -50min

So as you see there are many nice trips you can easily do by train.

These web site may be useful:

www.apt.arezzo.it/default.asp?var=0&lang=eng

www.bellaumbria.net/Assisi/home_eng.htm

www.assisionline.com/

www.luccatourism.eu/lucca_city_tuscany.htm

www.comune.siena.it/main.asp?id=1437&l=en

www.pisaturismo.it/site/home_en.asp

Ask if you need further help.

Have a nice time!

Thank you for this information. Very useful.

Knowing the travel times to places really makes it easy to plan. I will now continue to investigate the cost of train travel. I believe there is a ticket you can buy that rather than being to a particular destination is for miles/kilometers traveled. Do you know anything about this?

Thanks again for all your help. Greatly appreciated. I'm feeling more and more excited with each new post. And thank you for your offer of on-going assistance.

I think you are refering to the Interail ticket but it's for travelling from one country in Europe to another and you must have been living in a European country for at least 6 months. There are other discounts but they usually apply to medium/long journeys. For the trips I mentioned you will nearly always travel on regional trains so no discounts will apply. Regional train tickets cost less than intercity Eurostar tickets. Regional trains have many more stops and so the journey is longer. Eurostar trains only stop in the main stations so it depends on where you want to go.

Bye!

Thinking about it maybe you meant the "Biglietto Chilometrico" but it has been eliminated in 2003. Now there's the "Flexi" ticket:

www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/index.jsp…

but as you can see you can't use it on regional trains and then it costs 20% more. Liberty costs!!!!!

Bye!