Looking for suggestions and advice for upcoming week in Florence

[TriptoFlorenceadviceplease]

I am trying to figure out how best to spend money wisely during our short trip to Florence in a fortnight. We have 6 days.
I am looking at all these "skip the line tickets" and wondering if these are essential. We are late 60s and a bit creaky, but pretty good walkers on the whole. We love a walking tour.
Do we need to buy the (very) expensive guided tours, or is it possible to see enough under our own steam? Any tips would be gratefully received.
TIA

Went last summer. Booked tickets online before we went, but not any guided tours. Just did our own thing around the museums etc. Many had interactive QR codes to get info. And we had an old fashioned guide book too.
Everywhere was very busy though.

Thank you @Seeline . Did you book tickets directly with the museum/gallery etc? I read that it is possible to go into the duomo for free. We wouldn't be able to climb all the steps up to the gallery anyway, so would be ok with strolling round the cathedral.

Google free walking tours, joining one of these could be a good idea. I recently did one in Switzerland and had an amazing afternoon with a lovely couple.
Or look at apps or a guide book and do your own walking tour.

Yes, I thought I had found a perfect walking tour but the web site says all suspended due to covid. I have emailed them. I know covid is back, but I didn't realise things were shutting down again.

I agree, book tickets, but not tours. The Accademia is my must-see (sorry, Uffizi) - either first thing in the morning when it opens or one of the last slots of the day. Personally I found the Uffizi almost claustrophobic, it was so full of tour groups and it spoiled it for me.

Take a bus/taxi up the hill to Fiesole for amazing views across the city and some lovely Roman ruins.

I think 6 days is a lovely amount of time - you can potter and enjoy everything but won’t get bored.

At the train station in Florence, there is a restaurant/cafe with hot/cold buffet for 5 Euros back in the 2010 when I was last there. It was great food such as lovely salads, hot chicken, potatoes, grilled veg. I went there to top up my salad box for my lunch.

Thank you. I told DH I would get useful, straightforward advice on here. I have been looking on so many travel sites I was getting confused.

Where are you staying? It’s a lovely compact place - get your bearings with a few of the main streets and you pretty much don’t need a map after that.

The food market is worth it too. Get some nice jarred truffles to take home. And on the first floor, the most incredible toasted sandwiches you've ever had in your life.

Try and get tickets from the venues themselves. They will have set entry times and are actually pretty cheap. It's all the touts on getyourguide that are expensive - Italy is rife with touts. They buy up the advance tickets with timed entry slots and sell them for €100 calling them "skip the line". It's a really annoying aspect of any museum there.

There is a Florence pass you can buy that seems like good value on the face of it but in fact there are only very limited entry slots for the academia and uffizi with this. Hence all the fucking queues everywhere - it's queue or pay a tout unless you're lucky enough to get on the website as soon as entry go on sale.

Via della Scala, Firenze

Don’t miss the Medici chapel. Blows your mind when you walk into it.

You still need a ticket for the Duomo - we got one for the museum and the baptistry as well. We still had to queue for ages to get into duomo. Other places we didn't have to queue much.

thanks @Coldia.

This was my concern. Those skip the line tickets seem so expensive. I will make a list of places we want to see then book online direct.

Thanks everybody. This is so helpful. We really can't afford to get ripped off, but we want to make the most of this trip.

Definitely buy tickets in advance for the Uffizi and the Boboli Gardens. Everything else is ok to buy on the day, including the Duomo. For the Duomo, you don't have to pay if you're attending a service (like St Paul's cathedral). Just make sure your shoulders are covered and you're not wearing butt-cheek-skimming shorts.

The Big Red Bus tours are really good for getting up to places like Fiesole and Piazza Michelangelo, as well as catching a bit of a breeze on the upper deck. If you do go up to Fiesole, there's a fascinating old monastery with mummies and all sorts of treasures, as well as the Roman/Estruscan ruins. There's also a nice restaurant with gorgeous views over the city.

The Medici house near Piazza San Marco s also worth visiting. It's smaller than the Palazzo Pitti but really pretty. If you're a history buff then The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici is brilliant - you can read the history of Renaissance Florence before you go, then actually see all the same places the book talks about. Really brings the city to life.

A tip I got from here before we went - check which days places are open - from memory lots of the galleries and museums are closed on Mondays (so we went to the Boboli gardens that day). Have a lovely time!

Instead of the Uffizi, which is always crowded, perhaps visit the convent of san marco, which has some amazing murals by fra angelico, is very atmospheric and usually quite emptyl

Yes they were closed on Mondays when we went too. As you say just go to Boboli on that day though.

Uffizi is definitely worth doing imo. Yes it's hellish busy but my lord it is crammed full of amazing things. My head was reeling after - it was like a culture super-injection.

We went early in the day to the Uffizi and it wasn't too bad.
I think you have to go when you're in Florence!

Palazzo Vecchio

We were in Florence for just a day and decided to go there. We booked tickets online for a private tour. Our guide met us at the ticket office and we went in through a 'secret' entrance from the street. Up to the roof for a truly spectacular view of Florence and we saw Dante's death mask as portrayed in Da Vinci Code. And lots more ..
Palazzo Vecchio Secret Passages: Uncover Hidden History & Intrigue (palazzo-vecchio-tickets.com)

We also chanced upon a fabulous restaurant on a side street away from the main tourist traps and had the most delicious pasta ever. Sorry if I could remember the name I would tell you. We made a vow to go back to Florence one day and find it again.

We (me, DH and 3 kids) also wandered into a very upmarket leather handbag type shop in one of the squares to take advantage of the air conditioning and the owner made a bee line for us. We had no intention of buying anything and I actually thought he was going to ask us to leave but he asked us where we were from. He recognised our accent and said the moment he heard us speak he knew we were from the same place as him. It turned out that he lived on the same road as me when we were children. It's a small world.

We went to Florence a few years ago, and got a lot more out of it than we'd otherwise have done because we'd watched the relevant sections of this before we went

www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-smithsonian-guide-to-essential-italy

Agree Fiesole is well worth the trip too.

Just coming back for a question I can't find the answer to:
I have bought a Ghiberti Pass - valid for 3 days, but had to book a timed slot for the Santa Reparata. The slot is only 20 minutes. Does anyone know if I have to join the (enormous) line for the Cathedral in order to get in for my timed slot, or is there another entrance? The line was 2 hours long when I passed it this morning.
TIA

Just coming back to this with a warning about theft. We were very careful regarding pick pockets, however, we did not expect property to be stolen from the actual security check going into the Santa Reparata. Money, cards and driving licence all gone. You cannot hire or drive a car in Italy without the actual plastic licence. So, if you are going to visit a museum or gallery, think carefully about what you take with you. You have to empty your pockets and put everything on the table, then go through the metal detector. The wallet didn't make it out the other side.