Just to add a voice in favour of this excellent place. Hard to find the nameplate when you arrive, easy to lock your scarf in the street door as you close it on departure!! So much character, such friendly staff, such good rooms, ideal location. In Florence [Firenze = Fear - en -zay] you need no dining room, etc, you step out the door to everything.
Don't just rush from tourist site to tourist site, appreciate the general environment.... although for the people of Florence there is a great sense of the city ruined by vast tourist and foreign student numbers.
The Accademia is just up the street to the right, where you can see the original of Michelangelo's David and many other major works. The originals have so much more strength and live beauty than the motley copies.
The cathedral and baptistry are just to the left. If nothing else look at the art work on the doors of the baptistry.
Go past the cathedral (duomo = dwo mo) to the Piazza Signorile, which has fewer heads skewered in posts than in days of the great Florentine republic. Be conscious that when you go to this centre of the Renaissance that it was not just 'painterville' 1500, but the result of the big families of Florence gathering the world's books and knowledge over 200 years. We don't do that much these days. Also compare with your own local cultural environment the fact that in 1500 or so, when Machiavelli spent his evenings writing the most influential political treatise in 500 years, that the population of Florence was about 30,000. Imagine what we could do if we stopped chatting and gossiping and read and thought a bit more!
The Uffizi Gallery (the offices of the Florentine republic) contain a very valuable and somewhat orderly historical display of Italian art. Book ahead or queue early and/or long.
The market, short walk, is good especially for scarves and hats.
Remember that you will do a lot of walking and it may be wet (as well as cold in winter). Soft shoes on cobblestones = angry legs.
