Photo: View of Florence from the hill town of Fiesole. It was a hazy day but you can see the Duomo in the background.

How should we spend our last day in Tuscany? We were going to daytrip to Lucca and Pisa but we got off to a late start, then decided we'd had enough sightseeing, the duomos and piazzas were starting to look much the same. So we scrapped the plan and drove up to the Florentine hill suburb of Fiesole instead.

Getting there was half the "fun." We thought our chosen route would keep us out of trouble, but instead we got into heavy traffic and closer and closer to the center of Florence. We tried to follow the nav program but it started sending us in circles, till we realized it wasn't getting a GPS signal. So with no detailed paper map at hand we just kept going in what we hoped was the right direction till we finally saw a sign to Fiesole. We do get overly dependent on these electronic devices!

Halfway up the hill we saw a parking lot and decided not to try our luck parking further up. A footpath led up the hill right near us, which looked far more inviting than the asphalt road that was being repaired ahead of us. How nice to be on a shady trail, with frequent benches and beautiful views of the city below. Cold drinks and gelato restored us when we finally reached the medieval town at the top.

Only later on did we realize we hadn't done our homework: there were significant Roman ruins that we missed. (So that's where all those tour buses were going!) But by now we're a bit jaded: seen one amphitheater, seen them all. Well, not exactly. The photos we discovered of it belatedly looked spectacular.

PHOTOS OF FIESOLE