Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Tuscany #1

So I'm back from my family vacation in Tuscany. It was my first time in the region, but unfortunately taking pictures there appeared to be difficult, because of two factors: weather and kids. Thus I'll try to describe my impressions about regions itself and try to give you few hints what you should definitely see and what is complete waste of time.
Let's start with lodging. We wanted to spend a week in one of the many villas in Tuscany. Because of prices (Italy is VERY expensive) we had only few choices and because of language even less. We were trying to arrange something over the Internet, but cheap villas are sold very early and many of others do not respond to your english e-mails or respond to them after 2-3 weeks! Finally I booked a room in Villa Pasquini and it was a very good choice. Place is simple, but has the atmosphere. It lacks pool or air conditioning, but instead offers very nice rooms and good food. And what's even more important it's in the middle of the interesting part of Tuscany and close to everywhere.
Then attractions. Because of kids I had to focus on cities and kids attractions like zoo or amusement parks. That's why all my photos are architecture kind. We visited cities like Firenze, Pistoia, Venice, Siena, Montecatini Terme, Pisa, Viareggio, Lucca and many others. Let's try to describe best and worst things of few of them. Today I'll focus on Venice. More in next posts on my blog very soon.
Venice has very expensive parking where price is calculated on daily basis, so you've to pay 24 EUR for 24 hours even while visiting the city for two hours only - rip-off! I don't even mention food quality or prices and other facilities. Also paying 80 EUR for gondola ride was too expensive for me - I prefered small (0,2 ml) beer for 8 EUR (only 8 as Italian said!!!!). Besides prices Venice is a really nice, but also crowded city. You should definitely go there, but it might be better choice to park your car outside of the island and go there by train or bus. I also suggest going there in spring or autumn, not summer. In summer it's hard to take a picture with no people in it.
But instead of reading my scribble, please just see some of my poor pictures taken in the city:





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