Bill

We just returned from a 15 day trip to Italy and wanted to share some thoughts we had from the trip. <BR> <BR>First hotels - all the hotels we stayed in ranged in price from $60/night to $140/night. <BR>We used Rick Steves book a lot - we booked only two weeks prior and traveled over Easter and thus had a difficult time with reservations (couldn't be too choosy). <BR> <BR>Florence: Residenza Apostoli near the Ponte Vecchio and Ufizzi Museum. Nice room - great bath, new bed and furnishings. It is a small bed and breakfast on the second floor of a very old building. The first floor looked like a warehouse - two locked doors to get through. I liked it a lot, MaryAnn was less enthusiastic due to the entry - four keys to get into the room! <BR> <BR>Lucca: Piccolo Hotel Puccini - great location in town center. ok room -very clean, great value - best room value of trip. Very friendly staff. <BR> <BR>Siena: Hotel Athena - good location, more of a business hotel - good room but at a high price (it was Easter week). <BR> <BR>Rome: Hotel Oceania - good location, our room was very small, but with a great bed. The sink was actually in the shower! The room was right across from the reception area and noisy. The other rooms were larger and quieter. We would consider staying there again, but not in Room #1. Very friendly staff. <BR> <BR>Venice: Hotel Locanda Ovidius. A nice room (ours was very small, but the bathroom was great). Good location - near the Rialto bridge. It has two rooms overlooking the grand canal. Ours overlooked a wall, but was very quiet. The price was reasonable for Venice. We would consider staying there again, but try not to get room #109 as it is so small. Friendly staff. <BR> <BR>Bellagio: Hotel Metropole - great location, great view, ok room, good value. We would consider staying there again. <BR> <BR>As for the meals, we tried to keep most dinners at around $50 - 60, with a few nights of pizza for less and one or two nights of splurging. <BR> <BR>Our meals in Florence were OK, nothing to go out of the way for. <BR> <BR>In Lucca, we ate at La Buca di Saint'Antonio, right behind the hotel. It was great and a good value. Less than $60 for two with wine! If in Lucca, it is a must. Reservations were required. <BR> <BR>In Siena, we ate at the Ristorante Mugolone -the food was great. The service spotty. We liked the food so well we went back twice. There are three waiters for a large number of tables. When the resteraunt gets full, one of the waiters can't handle it. One is OK, and one is great. If you eat here, get Paolo. He is the older waiter and is is an excellent waiter in any resteraunt. Here, he is a godsend. We definitely would go back, but only with Paolo as the waiter. Excellent food and a good value. <BR> <BR>Rome: We spent four days in Rome and had two excellent meals. Both lunches - one at a fish market on Plazza Navona (don't remember the name but it has outside tables on the Plazza and a few down a side street. It is packed much of the time - very informal. The second was a similar small resteraunt up the hill from the Colosseum on the way to St Peter in Chains Church (just below the church, one block east, two blocks above the colosseum. <BR> <BR>Venice: One outstanding dinner at Antiche Cantine Andenghi - fixed price, you eat what they serve. Excellent meal, even better entertainment. Best night of our trip. It is a rustic resteraunt, with limited seating. The night we were there one of the owners was celebrating his birthday, so it may have been unusual. We also ate at Da Ivo. A big and expensive disappointment. Maybe we ordered the wrong items, but we got little help and spent almost 2X what we did for the next most expensive meal (andenghi) of our trip. The view was great - right over the canal. Reservations are a must at both. <BR> <BR>Bellagio: Barchetta Ristorante. Great food, fair prices. A definite repeat. <BR> <BR>Some thoughts: <BR> <BR>We flew in and out of Malpensa. We wanted to stay near the airport on the last day. We picked Bellagio. It was a good choice since we had a noon flight out (would have been a problem with an early AM flight). Less than 2 hours by car to the airport and a beautiful town. We would like to have had two days in the Lake Como area vs. one. <BR> <BR> <BR>

lisa

Thanks for the trip report, especially the details!

jeff

Bill, <BR>Give us the names of the restaurants in Florence so we can avoid them. Thanks.

Bill

Jeff, I wasn't disappointed in the resteraunts in Florence. We ate at one twice - reasonable food and reasonable price - the Bibo just south of the Ponte Vecchio (a Rick Steves recommendation). It was our first two nights in Italy and we were more impressed with resteraunts we found later. We ordered the tourist menu for three of the four meals (two people for two dinners). It was fair, the al la carte food was better. We didn't oreder a tourist menu (fixed price for three to five courses) the rest of the trip. The galleries in Florence are great! Have a great trip.

Gretchen

Bill, thanks for the info. While at Lake Como, did you visit Varenna? If so, how did it compare to Bellagio?

Bill

Gretchen, there is a boat that can take you to Varenna. We took it, but did not get off. We wanted to spend some time in Bellagio and took the boat to see the lake and just look at Bellano, Varenna and Menagio (sp?) from the water. Varenna is a larger town, looks very pretty (as does Bellano which is smaller than Varenna, but looks larger than Bellano). You can stay in one and visit the other very easily - they are right across the lake from one another. We stayed at Bellagio because it looked to be a shorter drive to the airport.

Jane

Bill, thanks for your trip notes! We are going to Venice in a couple of weeks and I'd like to get details on Antiche Cantine Andenghi. I didn't see it in any of my guidebooks. Where is it located? was the meal less than $60 for both of you? <BR> <BR>Re: da Ivo - yours is the first unfavorable review of this restaurant. We were considering going here for a splurge, but not if it's overrated. Was it just the food that was less than you had hoped? what did you order? was the service indifferent? <BR> <BR>Sorry for all the questions, but with such limited time on our vacation, I want to really make the most of it.

bill

Jane, the phone number for the Ardenghi is 041-5237691. It is between and north of the Rialto and San Marco areas, near the hospital. Less than a 10 minute walk from the Rialto, if you can walk right to it. We found it in the Rick Steves guidebook - best guidebook we found. The price quoted in the guidebook is L70,000 per person, around $33 per person. We were charged L150,000 for two, but had a second bottle of wine (don't ask me how we drank two bottles, I usually have a problem with two glasses of wine). (The meal went from 8 pm to almost 1 am) <BR> <BR>I am guessing the extra L10,000 was either a price increase or for the second bottle of wine. Either way, the meal was excellent and a great value. They are closed Sunday and Monday. <BR> <BR>da Ivo was a good meal, I just ordered the wrong meal and had a difficult time getting help in getting what I wanted. We ended up spending almost L300.000 for a meal that we didn't enjoy as much as ones costing less than half that. I would conclude it was what we ordered, the price and the impatience of the staff in helping us select something we would want that contributed to our disappointment. The people next to us were very happy and had been there a number of times before. It is their favorite resteraunt in Venice.

linda

Which route did you take from Melpensa to Bellagio by car? We'll be driving the same route in October.

bwhyte

We, too, had an overrated and expensive meal at Da Ivo recently. Reservations a must, but food was just ok and the most expensive meal we had. Staff was not friendly and just seemed to want to get us cleared out. We had trouble finding it the first time, then ran across in 2x inour wanderings. Re: Bellagio -- difficult road to/from Como. Recommend taking hydrofoil there. If you must drive, take ferry to Mennagio (sp) or Tremezzo (closed for repair in mid-June) and take winding shore road down to the A9 autobahn just outside Como.