MAPPING TUSCANY

Looking for Tuscany related travel advice? Wondering when to visit, which city to spend an extra day in and what restaurant to avoid at all cost? I can provide local trip planning help for individual travelers and small groups, who plan to taste the best wine and dodge the worst meal.  Some Siena or Florence  tips are relevant for most visitors and can be easily found on the internet or right here on my blogs (e.g.  how to skip the Uffizi queue  and which organic  Brunello winery to visit) -  other recommendations for your stay in Tuscany will depend  on taste, age and interests of the traveler exploring our hills. TRIP PLANNING HELP IN TUSCANY For more local insight and  info about Map It Out's expert advice for your Tuscan itinerary send Katja an email (more about me here ). My t ailor-made tips for recommended sights, winery visits and booking service of hands-on activities or guided tours during  your holiday normally ...

Queues, overpriced gelato and queues again. Florence can be tiring. Let alone with kids. But exploring the Florentine Renaissance dream can also be lots of fun thanks to the many educative and inspiring guided tours - especially with kids. With a playful and less intellectualizing introduction to Italy's art, history and cultural heritage everybody has a better time, the adults too.  The most knowledgeable person I turn to when planning a day in Florence with children is Molly McIlwrath. As a licensed tour guide with a five year old daughter she knows from first hand experience what will work for families traveling with kids, and - maybe even more importantly - what definitely won't.  Molly explaining the techniques in Luigi Mecocci's wood carving studio in Florence Avid reader and creative mind at large, Molly is also involved in the planning of hands-on activities in some of Florence best museums and art schools (many of them are available in English thanks to t...

Italy's schools close for three months every summer. A fact that drives the country's parents crazy. I'm lucky enough to be able to send my two rascals off to their relatives in Switzerland for all of July. But that still leaves me with eight hot weeks in the company of an 8- and a 10-year-old who spend their days arguing with each other.  As every Italian mother knows, the easiest way to lift the family spirit is to spend as much time as possible at the sea. And  the Argentario Sailing School has the perfect address for a new summer activity, once the youngsters are beyond  the age of prolonged sand castle building.  The weekly sailing courses take place from June to the beginning of September. Children need to be able to swim and can participate from the age of six. The course takes place from Monday to Saturday with morning groups for smaller kids and first timers and afternoon groups for the more experienced between the young sailors.  ...

The isle of Elba is a beach paradise, Mediterranean at its best with a hint of the Caribbean thanks to its crystal clear waters - a s long as you don't come in July or August. Elba in high season is obviously still beautiful, but the time spent enjoying the beach will be amazingly short. Most of the day you'll be looking for parking, a free parasol or an unoccupied square meter of sand to lay down your towel before you join the queue for ice cream.  Elba may be the biggest of the seven isles in the Tuscan archipelago and after Sicily and Sardinia already the third largest island of Italy, but it's still... small. In any case too small to absorb the huge amount of tourists scouting for the best beach on Elba from mid June to the first week of September (Italian school holiday time). Hence, the most important advice in regard to beach hunting on Elba is timing. Napoleon's isle is paradise on earth from the second week of September to the second week of June, a...

Organic tastes better, organic is the right choice for the planet,  organic is healthier for your kids and yourself.  Whatever science and consumer reports say about the above, one thing is sure: green shopping is more fun and a feast for the eye! At least in the Tuscan countryside, when buying your pesticide  free fruit and vegetables right at the organic farm.  Organic shopping in Tuscany: even the customers look better Find below a list and map with Tuscany's most picturesque p it stops for organic food shopping, from the region's southernmost corner all the way up to Florence.  TERRA ETRUSCO , Capalbio Scalo Near Capalbio's train station, close to WWF's Lago di Burano nature reserve and the Tuscan sea,  Terr a Etrusco is an organic farm with a 21st century approach. Restaurant, grocery store and the rooms of the farm-stay are a stylish and welcome break from the usual fake Tuscan decor.  LA PARRINA , Albinia near Orbetello One of th...

Recovering in the shade (photo Flickr user Toby Leah Bochan) Florence with children? Visiting the city of the Renaissance with a bunch of unruly kids sounds like your worst nightmare? I’m with you: art, culture and Tuscan wine and food make of Florence a perfect adult only destination.  But then,  the most vivid memory I have from my last child-free visit at the Uffizi isn't of Leonardo da Vinci or Botticelli, but of myself downing over-prized espresso at the museum café in a desperate attempt to get over last night's han gover . In this sense Florence in the company of a few inquisitive kids seemed like my last resort to skip the wine and see the art instead.  Once we'd decided to bring the kids, the question was how to go about it. FIRENZE CARD: SKIP THE LINES AND ENJOY THE ART WITH THE FLORENCE MUSEUM PASS If you have three days in Florence there is no better way to see frescoes, paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance masters than with the...

Bronzino's famous portrait of two members of the Medici family: Eleonora di Toledo and her second born son Giovanni Exploring Florence in company of children isn't always fun. If you ever tried to steer a pram through the Renaissance city, you know what I'm talking about. But luckily, being in Florence with kids also means discovering things you wouldn't have gotten to as an adult only traveler. The Palazzo Vecchio family museum is a good example of this.  The civic museum in Piazza della Signoria is on the to do list of a never-ending stream of tourists. But to truly appreciate the countless rooms, stunning frescoes and centuries of history, you best book one of the guided tours especially designed with kids in mind.  Intrigued by all the tours Florence's family museum organizes, our group of old and young ended up joining  Life at Court . This interactive tour starts  off in Palazzo Vecchio's magnificent Sala dei Cinquecento  and make...

 Paganico - off-the-beaten-path in Southern Tuscany Towards the end of summer, Tuscany is getting ready for an endless parade of village festivals (often called SAGRE). With it being still early days for autumn's wine and chestnut festivals, Paganico starts the season with something quite different. The  Sagra della Grannocchia is a festival dedicated to frogs, with the main event being a race in which participants push a type of wheel-barrow loaded with frogs - the difficulty of the race being that the frogs keep jumping off their carriage (and have then to be put back in). Therefore it's not just about speed but also about who arrives with the most frogs. I know what you think - these people are weird. But surprisingly Paganico is quite a lovely village, off the tourist trail and with a fantastic gelateria  producing some of Italy's best ice-cream .  The town will sport a pageantry parade, live music and special activities for kids over the weekend...

Restaurant La Pineta at Marina di Bibbona beach  One of Italy's best seafood restaurants can be found on Tuscany's central coast, at the beach of Marina di Bibbona. Walking past La Pineta  it's easy to mistake the restaurant for a lovely but simple beach bar and deck chair rental place. A nd whilst you can still just visit La Pineta to rent an umbrella for your day at the beach, it would be foolish to miss out on the seafood treasures that are prepared in the restaurant's kitchen. We happened to be in the area for other reasons, but once we realized that we were standing in front of La Pineta we couldn't resist having a look. Timing was perfect, we opened the door shortly before 7pm. No clients around yet and the Michelin starred cook, who - judging from the frenzy in the kitchen - would have had better to do, generously took the time to show us around.  Luciano Zazzeri Proud owner and chef of Michelin starred restaurant  La Pineta

American art collector and world traveler Eli Portnoy reminded me to  make time this summer for a visit at the Chianti Sculpture Park. Here's why (in Eli's words): Italian family friends from Venice introduced me a few weeks ago to the Sculpture Park and Performance Center of Chianti in the small town of Pievasciata 8 miles north of Siena. A true cultural gem not well known apart from a few European tourists and Tuscan locals. It’s a bit off the beaten track (part of the road is actually dirt), but I was delighted by what was at the end of the drive. Glass Labyrinth at Chianti Sculpture Park

Tyrannosauras rex on the look out for its next pray. Yeah... I've sworn to myself that this blog would focus on Southern Tuscany, and on Southern Tuscany only. And as I'm never slow to break any good resolution I ever came up with, here's a post about Florence. It's Natural History Museum just didn't seem to get enough exposure on the web without me.  Right now (spring to autumn 2012) the museum sports a show on dinosaurs . Preferably you visit the museum once it is over. No, it isn't badly done. Not at all. It just had the same effect on me as Steven Spielberg's dinosaur movies. Unlike E.T., I still haven't been able to watch Jurassic Park in one go (and I'm normally not one to fall asleep during movies) . I can see that the  dinosaur triology gets five star votes from people who live on dinosaurs ,  but does it really work for anybody else? And it's not just me. Whilst my kids ask for mercy when I frighten them into sleep with sto...

Trekking in Cinigiano: beautiful views, lovely tracks and - oh boy -  plenty of Tuscan wine and food. SATURDAY, MAY 5 - "TREKKING DE' CITTI" . Kids' trekking ('citti' means 'bambino' in Tuscan dialect) 3pm registration at Cinigiano's tourist office. The children's trekking is for free, but registration is necessary (for insurance reasons). Apart of insurance for the day, the kids will get a nice gadget to take home. 3.30pm Start of the trekking in Castello di Porrona (a lovely medieval hamlet five minutes from Cinigiano by car). From Porrona the kids will be taken on a  guided walk trough the Tuscan countryside with animal watching and flower picking. Once back on Porrona's beautiful piazza there will be a snack and lots of fun games waiting for everybody.  Kids from 6 to 12 years of age. Younger children can join if accompanied by their parents. Older ones may want to join the trekking on Sunday morning.