Florence and Pisa by Taxi?

[ramsam]

Hi. we are considering hiring Tuscany by Taxi for the day to visit Florence and Pisa. Budgeting our time is what is making me nervous. How can we judge when to get back from each stop? will the driver give suggestions or should we have whole thing planned. I think our ship leaves at 7pm.

Thanks for your help

[chipmaster]

Hi. we are considering hiring Tuscany by Taxi for the day to visit Florence and Pisa. Budgeting our time is what is making me nervous. How can we judge when to get back from each stop? will the driver give suggestions or should we have whole thing planned. I think our ship leaves at 7pm.

Thanks for your help

 

Tuscany by Taxi is one of the vendors I considered and mentioned many times here so I will assume their drivers are experienced like the ones we finally chose. If you have no plan they will create one that hits all the big sights.

 

The drive back from Florence is a long one, mostlly on a two lane divided highway. Traffic can and does get backed up, but the drivers know this very well and should more then plan when you need to return. Be very clear to tell your driver when the ship departs. Seperately you can ask the driver to get back earlier if you are really worried, for a 7pm sailing I would say shoot for 5pm and you'll be more then good! With such an early return if anything like a huge traffic bottle neck occurs all the tour buses from the ship will likely be behind you and thus the ship will wait ;) We actually screwed up and confused our driver by an hour off and got back with less then 30' to spare. There were busses coming back all the way till the very end.

 

I would recommend you get off the ship bright and early, do Pisa first. Others suggest doing it on the way back since it is much closer to Port and logistically if you are running late you can skip or cut the visit short. The downside to doing it in the PM is you do need to pre-reserve the climb if that is something you want to do to gurantee you get tickets( highly recommended! ). We were able to spend almost an hour and half at Pisa including securing tickets to climb after we arrived, spent 40' wandering and enjoying the grounds before we climbed. Then we were off to Florence, where our second stop was Academia ( pre-reserved ), we were done with these two bigges by lunch time. There is a lot to see, so have a discussion with your driver, you'll need to make some choices as you simply can't see everything in Florence.

 

DOn't worry, you made the right choice going private and will see much more then on any of the ship tours.

[luvz2run2000]

We booked with Tuscany by Taxi in 2006. Our group decided to stop in Pisa on the way to Florence and to go to the Academia. The driver gave us the website to prepurchase tickets to climb the tower, and told us what time to get them for. He took care of making the museum reservations for us so we would not have to wait in line.

 

Their livelyhood is the cruise trade. If they get people back to the ships late, the bad reviews on here, tripadvisor and other cruise sites will basically kill their business.

[Fblack]

Last year in Livorno several buses and private taxis were late getting back to the ship from Florence. Seems there was a Pisa-Florence soccer match that night and rioting fans blocked the streets. The ship waited 30+/- minutes for several late returning buses. We heard a few people in private transportation missed the ship. So just give yourself lots of extra time. Many times we take private taxis or hire a driver for tours. But I will not do so for distant excursions. You just never know what might happen and I never want to miss the ship.

[ramsam]

Thanks everyone. I feel quite a bit more reassured!