Is Florence as beautiful as they say?

After Lucca we went straight to Florence( Firenze ) and we discover what does it mean to travel on peak hours in this lovely city:

IT IS A REAL NIGHTMARE!!

Florence is seeing at the moment (October 2016) a major change in its streets system and I can assure you that you’ll hate yourself for choosing to go there by car.

It took us over an hour to figure out how to reach the hotel considering that the traffica was jam, a lot of streets were closed, the TomTom was useless and it was getting dark.

In my opinion Florence isn’t as beautiful as everyone says. In Italy there are plenty of better cities, especially more families friendly. In the “pedestrian” area in the historic center plenty of cars will pass by and you’ll have always to be looking after your child. The craziness of the tourism and the traffic is quite remarkable during the day and it is really difficult to appreciate a city packed with people and cars.

On the complete contrary, the evenings are incredibly quite considering that a lot of tourists are resting in hotels and in Tuscany, as almost everywhere in Italy, the locals are going out only on Friday and Saturday nights.

So if you are visiting Florence as a couple, the best time is to walk around in the evening when you’ll be able to appreciate the beauty of the city in relaxed atmosphere.

As a Family I’ll say choose another city, it isn’t really worth it.

Hotel in Florence
Restaurants in Florence
Children's playground

Hotel in Florence - Club Hotel

We stayed in the Club Hotel located in Via Santa Caterina da Siena, 11. The location was perfect for walking around the city centre and the rooms were quite spacious.

We chose a triple room because it was bigger than a normal double so perfect for a family. Sometimes also a triple room is CHEAPER than a double for 2 people. The reason is quite simple: The hotels are finding more difficult in renting out these kind of rooms so at some point they have to convince couples to stay in family rooms (usually less romantic)

IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW ABOUT THE HOTEL. They offer only breakfast service and there is no bar/restaurant. So when we arrived we had no choice to buy something to eat in the next door supermarket (open 7 days a week, 7am-11pm (roughly)). Of course there are restaurants around the area but with a small baby at 9pm going out wasn’t an option.

The hotel offers a useful parking service so after wasting an hour in finding the place, at the end someone took care of the car. The price for this service is 28 euros a day! Yep… parking in Italy isn’t cheap and you’ll soon find out that it is the same in Venice, Amalfi, Taormina, Ortigia, Rome, etc.

Families tips:

Pick a family room. (If your child is younger than 2 years old, you can book the room for 2 people and ask to provide a baby cot after)

There is no restaurant in the hotel. (so quite difficult to get milk out of breakfast hours, etc.)

My opinion about the Hotel:

Score 67 Points

Restaurant in Florence: Trattoria Mamma Gina

Borgo San Jacopo 37/r, 50125, Florence, Italy

phone: +39.055.239.6009

The trattoria Mamma Gina trays to recreate a true experience of an Italian trattoria. The waiters were funny in their own way and the Fiorentina Steak was impressively good. So we recommend this restaurant easily.

The house wine is ok.

Families tips:

The restaurant Trattoria Mamma Gina has a high chair for babies. There is no kids menu so we paid full price for the pasta ordered for Oscar.

My opinion about the restaurant:

Score 68 Points