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Home > Cities: Florence

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Sample itinerary for Tuscany

Casa Rosa - Florence

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Accommodates 4 --2 Bedrooms -- 2 Baths
Swimming Pool - Air-Conditioned Bedrooms - Satellite TV - Internet Point

This is a truly unique offering. First, however, you should know what Casa Rosa is not: It is not a big accommodation, and while all rooms are furnished in restrained good taste, the apartment is not, in itself, fancy or elegant.

Casa Rosa lies in a pink stucco building nestled on the grounds of one of Florence's most prestigious villa hotels. You enter directly from outside, at raised ground level, into the well-equipped kitchen, off of which is a smallish twin bedroom. At the far end of the kitchen, and forming an "L" with it, is the comfortably furnished living room with a dining table for 4 at the kitchen end. Off the living room lies a pleasant bedroom, equal in size to the other, with a divisible matrimonial bed. Beds are good, and there are adequate reading lamps. Each bedroom has an excellent bathroom en-suite, each with tub and hand-held shower. Adjacent to each bedroom is a little hallway with a sliding door that leads into a large walk-in closet shared by both of the bedrooms; this sounds as if it should result in a significant lack of privacy, but in reality it doesn't. Casa Rosa has a phone line for both incoming and outgoing calls. Shortly, we expect the flat to be equipped with both satellite TV and a separate DSL line (hopefully with a wireless router), so that you can easily hook your laptop up to a high-speed internet line.

So far, so good, but nothing extraordinary. Casa Rosa's uniqueness results from a combination of three things:

(a) A lovely terrace runs the entire length of the living/dining room, effectively doubling the living space. The terrace enjoys an evocative view over the southern hills of Florence, dotted with villas, vines, and clusters of trees. The quality of the light is exquisite. This is a delightful place for outdoor dining, reading, and just plain relaxing.

(b) The beautifully manicured grounds of the property offer perhaps the most magnificent view of Florence to be had anywhere, surpassing even the one from Piazzale Michelangelo. The entire Florentine cityscape, from San Miniato to the Palazzo Vecchio to the Duomo - it's all spread out before you. This is a view which reinfuses meaning into that overused word, "awesome". Comparable experiences are seeing the Grand Canyon or taking a gondola down the Grand Canal for the first time. You also have the use of a stunning swimming pool shared by guests at the adjacent hotel; when you poke your head out of the pool, what you see is Brunelleschi's dome!

(c) In terms of exploring Tuscany, the location is ideal. You are in Bellosguardo ("beautiful view"), Florence's most prestigious neighborhood, located on the southern slope of the city. You can walk down to the Ponte Vecchio in 20 minutes; or you can drive in 3 minutes to convenient parking in the Piazza del Carmine. Most important, being on the south side of Florence, you enjoy easy access to all the attractions of the Tuscan countryside without having constantly to cross over Florentine traffic. (This is the terrific advantage of this location over, for example, Fiesole.) Siena, Arezzo, San Gimignano, Lucca, Montecatini, Chianti country - all are well within an hour's drive.

Casa Rosa is a fantastic place for two couples or for a family with well-behaved children.

PLEASE NOTE: While Casa Rosa lies on the grounds of the hotel, it does not come with hotel services. It is just a coincidence that Casa Rosa shares the hotel grounds. The hotel staff is as helpful as can be within reason, but the staff is not a formal part of the deal. You can take advantage of certain hotel services -- fresh linens; breakfast; lunch and snacks by the pool; laundry; gym; sauna; drivers -- but you must pay for such services, and they don't come cheap. Also, there are cats which roam the grounds; guests are told not to feed the cats, but we strongly suspect that cat-lover guests of Casa Rosa have not only ignored that rule but actually invited the cats into the flat. Thus, if you suffer from an extreme cat allergy and must have an ironclad guarantee that no cat has entered the flat for the past 20 years (or indeed for the past 20 days), we cannot make that guarantee.

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