30

"I don't like Florence. There simply is no atmosphere."
I cannot understand this statement.
But that's not the point. Everybody is free to have his own opinion. You must by no means justify what you did, mredman.

31

The atmosphere bit is difficult to explain.

When I go to Spain, I want to stay in a Spanish home. I want to drink morning coffee standing up in a Spanish cafeteria. I want to eat dinner among Spaniards. I want to have a conversation about life and how things used to be. I want to be taken to a secret viewpoint on the back of someone's motorcycle (or pickup truck!). To me, this is more important in travel than any church, museum, etc of which I have seen enough to last me several lifetimes.

None of this is possible in a touristy city. I live in Latvia. Yesterday I went out for a walk in the old town. Full of tourists. All shops and sales are directed at tourists. When you get more tourists than the population locals can't extend their welcome to everybody - there's just very little contact between tourists and locals. Restaurants have tourist prices and menus are more readable in English than Latvian. The waitress didn't know how to say "hot" in Latvian. What can a tourist take back from a visit to all this? "The church was big and nice" and "the museum displays were interesting but I forgot them already?" Many people visit Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in one go, then at home can't figure out which picture came from which country. To me that kind of travel is pointless.

So uhh yeah, that's me justifying what I mean by atmosphere :)

32

I want to stay in a Spanish home and so on and local atmosphere - easy. Take the metro, buy something on a market, in a super market, stay in line in a post office, ask the next person on the street if he is a local and where he goes out to eat, try to eat in a canteen form the townhall or any other administration

33

Yes...easy to do everywhere.

if you travel 5 minutes from the centre of Florence you can do all those things no problem...as you can in any reasonably sized city in Europe.

Or you can choose one of the thousands of other towns in Italy that have few or no tourists at all......

34

Of course,to do these things you need to speak the language...and you need to have time ;-)

This is where the '2 stops a day for 2 months' type itinerary doesn't help.......

Why not just rent an apartment in (say) Empoli for the whole period?

35

Also...on another point really.

This idea of visiting churches,museums (or anything else...it could just as well be parks,concert halls or pet shops ;-) is obviously intended for people who are interested in them.The architecture,the history,the art or whatever.....

Just because I've seen one (or a hundred) doesn't mean I don't want to see another one.

Or......it does only for people who are not really interested in this stuff in the first place.

Its like asking why a football fan goes to see hundreds of matches.Why not only see one? Because...if you like football...you don't get bored watching essentially the same thing over and over again.

36

mredman,

This looks amazing. Did you spend much time in any one place or constantly moving? Did it feel rushed?

37

There seems to be an interesting discourse occurring about the way in which people travel. This will be my first time in Europe and in truth there are some touristy places, cities, museums and festivals that I know that I can't, and in many ways, don't want to miss. But the beauty of this trip and having a car for these 2 months is that my girlfriend and I won't be trapped into doing anything we don't want to do. We will try to avoid booking far in advance and if fall in love with a place, we can stick around for a few days more. And if we have an experience like mredman in Florence, that we can just move on.

Obviously, we wont be able to EVERYTHING, and in truth will probably end up seeing very little. But 55 days in this part of the world excites me so much. And hearing you guys discuss it adds to it as well.

Johnny

38

Don't forget to budget for fuel burn and tolls. See http://www.viamichelin.com for a route planner that includes both.

39

Yeah, toll cost was a bit of an eye opener when I leased a car in France and drove through France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, etc Wish I knew about the viamichelin website then :-(

40

Thanks for that Fwoggie. :)