How to plan a visit to Florence?

It is funny how I ended up visiting Florence. Did it ever happen to you that a city slowly sneaks into your mind, and the thought of visiting it starts to grow and grow in the background? And then at the end you catch yourself booking the flight ticket...To me this was exactly the case with Florence. Sure, I have heard about the Medici family, read Machiavelli: The Prince, saw all the nice buildings in art history lesson...but never felt like visiting this amazing city for some reason so far.

I think the last drop was when my Mum visited Italy this summer and told me how nice it would be to spend at least couple of days in Florence, because there are so many nice things to see. 

So, slowly the desire accumulated in me and couple of weeks ago I noticed that I am talking to friends about my soon to be visit to Florence as a fact (Whatt???). This made me realize, that may be now I REALLY want and should go there. From this point it went really easy. I checked the hotels on booking.com and found one with 45% discount and breakfast included. Close to the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo and the Uffizi Gallery.

After this I bought the flight, or may be it was reverse..I am not sure any more..But anyways, it went pretty easy. I was setting a budget for myself for the flight and the hotel and adjusted my search results to it.

I will be in Florence between 19th and 22nd December. If you have any insider tips, I am very open to hear them, because so far the people I asked answered for the question "What should I visit?" like: "Everything!".

Sure I will not have time for everything, and I do not want to run like crazy. I want to see the great art works, drink a nice cappuccino (or better latte) and eat some local deserts in a nice cafe. Take photos, walk around. Go to a Christmas market and possibly see/hear a classical music concert. 

I was downloading a Florence sightseeing application to my phone (yeee,we live in the 21st century hurraahhh) and as far as I saw, the most famous sights are quite close to each other. 

I plan to buy the Firenze-Card which allows entrance to the main museums without queuing and unlimited use of the public transportation. Plus I joined the Facebook page of the Firenze-Card to hear about their latest updates.


This is my preparation so far. Next week I have to make some more specific schedule, because even though I want to be spontaneous, I also would like to see the main art places, the Boticelli paintings, Michalangelo art works, the Medici-places etc. So,to see all of these will require a well-planned trip.