mediterranean summer style holiday to discover florence and tuscany, living in a modern apartment

modern apartment with huge roof garden (150 square meters) in the heart of the historical center of Prato, facing the cathedral's bell tower and "Prato porta al Serraglio" train station from where you can ride on metropolitan train directly to the old center of Florence. The ride is 20/30 minutes, train service from early morning till midnight. Prato, 200.000 inhabitants, is the second town of the metropolitan area of Florence, the center is a tipical medieval town with artistic heritage, an international university, Monash University, an australian school where students from australia comes to study for one year time.
It has direct train connection with the Tirrenian sea, the main town of Tuscany (Pisa, Lucca, Arezzo), Rome, Bologna, Venice, Milan and Naples, located where the florentine plain meets the hills, it's the beginning of a long bicycle-path along the river that connect directly to the Appenninian mountains and other natural sites like Cascine di Tavola.
The apartment, as you can see from the pictures, has an open space with kitchen, dining room and lounge, open to the roof garden where there is a second kitchen, barbecue set, table and open air lounge. It has 3 bedrooms with 4 beds plus a small bed for child, two bathrooms with bath and shower and is fully equipped with computers, TV, DVD, air condition, microwawe, dishwasher and washing machine and is full of toys, books and movie to entertain your children. There is full internet access 24/24, free place to park the car in the neighborhood and a covered parking inside the train station. You can use our bikes, two for adults and two for kids, that you can also carry on some trains.

the building where is our apartment has a doorman and is located in the center of the old town, close to the pedestrian area and the shopping facilities. Within a short walk on the pedestrian road along the Bisenzio river (400 meters) there is the main supermarket and electronic store. In the center of Prato there are many typical restaurant, ethnic (chinese, indian, kebabs) winebar and coffebar, book-store and a huge public library with also music and movies. In august while most of people is on holyday so the town is really quiet, there is an open air arena in the Emperor Castle and many things to do in all the villages around Prato while the main cinemas are closed. Public trasportation is good, there are many bus lines that drives around the town and train and bus connection to Florence downtown and the airport. Pisa airport is connected by train but you need to change in Florence or Lucca.

me and my husband Maurizio are both architect, we currently work in Prato but we have also many experience of work and study abroad (France, UK, USA, Greece) and we use to live with au-pair girl that speaks in her own language with the kids, so in our apartment there is an "international taste" and you can enjoy the mediterranean summer climate living in the indoor and outdoor spaces of our apartment and roof garden. We have two kids, Marta 10 y.o. and Giovanni 7 y.o., they do lots of sports activities and play music. We like to discover other country and other cultures, we speak english and french and obviously italian language.