International Travel

Italy with Kids- Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa

May 16, 2019

Tuscany is a central region in Italy that we took the time to visit in the fall of 2018. The majority of our time was spent in Florence, but we took a couple of excursions to visit other cities not too far away. This post will focus on Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa. Ideally, I would have had a couple of weeks to explore Tuscany and a majority of the beautiful cities that make up this region, but we were only scheduled to be in Florence for a total of 5 days. I searched TripAdvisor for days looking for the best activities and decided the day after we arrive in Florence we would go on an all day excursion to see as much as possible in Siena, an included lunch break at a winery in the Chianti region for lunch, San Gimignano, and Pisa.

  • Siena

     Siena is a popular Tuscan city filled with medieval buildings and famous for the Palio. The Palio is a horse race held twice a year in the main city square Piazza Del Campo where ten horses and riders representing different wards (or neighborhoods) compete for bragging rights and the winning painted banner. Siena has been declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. 

When we first arrived in Siena we stayed with our group and went on a guided tour of this city. We spent time visiting the main sites of Piazza del Campo, Duomo di Siena The Baptistery, and Porta Pispini, followed by free time to explore whatever else we wanted to independently. 

Piazza Del Campo is the heart of Siena and often the starting point for all tourist to begin exploring this city. Duomo di Siena was such a beautiful church filled with black and white striped marble decorations. Every inch of the cathedral is covered in intricate designs and artwork, it’s one of the most impressive churches I’ve come across so far as far as the detail that has gone into the design. Porta Pispini remains from a gate erected in the 1300s to help protect the city. It’s always amazing to see and hear about the age-old history of cities, but being able to touch and walk through these places put in place of protection is always so cool to me. We used the available free time to walk around and take in the local sites. 

On the way back to the bus the tour guide announced to everyone we would have a new leader to hold the flag and guide us back to the bus, that new guide was Laila. She felt so special and took her job seriously of walking and holding the flag at a decent height for all of us to follow LOL.

  • Chianti region winery (lunch break)

We had a family style meal at a winery in the Tuscan country side. My favorite thing about Italy before anything else is the food, and this lunch break did not disappoint. There’s something about how fresh the pasta is in Italy compared to back home in the United States that always leaves me craving more. We had bread, salad, pasta, and cold cuts followed by three different wine tastings.

After lunch we spent a little more time at the winery exploring the vineyards, olive groves, hillside scenery, and wine cellars on the property. This was nice break before heading on to San Gimignano.

  • San Gimignano

After entering San Gimignano, we went on another guided tour of the city squares, cobbled streets, and medieval towers. After learning the history of this tiny city, we used our free time to seek out the famous Gelateria Dondoli who won the gelato world championship from 2006-2009. It was the ultimate after lunch treat! We took the time to explore the back streets of this town and walked to the top of a park hill to view the hillside scenery below. Right before it was time to head back to the group Laila managed to make room in her stomach for a slice of authentic Italian pizza.

  • Pisa

The final stop of the tour was in the world-famous city of Pisa. Pisa is best known for the leaning tower of Pisa, which we learned is actually a bell tower for the cathedral built right next to it. Laila didn’t meet the age limit to actually go inside the leaning tower of Pisa, so we took pictures of the outside and explored the cathedral and baptistery located right next to the leaning tower. There’s also a lot of tourist restaurants and souvenir shops in the area to explore. This was probably the shortest stop on the tour, but we had plenty of time to explore what was available in the area.

We learned a lot more than I thought possible during this one-day excursion and we got a great overview of these cities without feeling rushed. The excursion totaled 14-15 hours and I have to stress how much of a trooper Laila was throughout the day, not once complaining about all of the walking this tour required.