The excitement builds the day you receive that cruise ticket in the mail. Here it is: your pass to the wondrous scenery and charisma of the Italy found in movies. Wine on a terrace of grapevines, green and gold quilted hills, romantic stone villages, cobblestone streets, hundreds of statues and Vespas zipping around piloted by fashionable men and women braver than you. Hold it right there. Those Vespas are just the reason I avoid Florence, as are the hordes of tourists blocking the way to carefully mapped museums and leather shops.
What if you could enjoy many of the wonders of Florence with better scenery, more affordable fine restaurants and as much romance as an old movie? It's called a rental car and driving the wine route. Take that nine hours your cruise line gives you and make it a day found in dreams, without pushing through crowds and shaking from Vespa near-misses. Florence is not mandatory. Livorno, the port for Florence, has car rental places right off the main square (probably where your cruise transportation will drop you). The famous Tuscan wine route is a circle of roads with breathtaking scenery and enchanting villages and wineries. It includes the famous San Gimigiano (where you'll also find great Florentine leather shops) and mysterious Volterra, source of the world's great alabaster creations and home to wonderful affordable restaurants. One can also opt for just a half-circle route, leaving time to linger a bit longer over that glass of wine or hunt for souvenirs.
One tip for the drive: Italy's road signs can be frustrating and nearly impossible for non-natives to understand. They tend to tell you where the-village-that-isn't-on-the-map-is, without mention of the larger town just two miles past it. But there's a way to get around this: take a small compass. If it worked for us I'm sure it can work for almost anyone. We just held the compass alongside the map route and took the road that corresponded with the direction we needed. We ignored the sign names we couldn't find and opted for the North, East, South and West approach.