1st trip to Italy in October & can anyone give reviews on the three hotels we have in mind. (Rome) DioCleziano, (Florence)Monnalisa and (Venice) Ponte Dei Sospiri. Thanks in advance for your help!

Search Slowtrav.com for reviews. Also TripAdvisor.com.

I do not know your Rome choice, but the other two are very nice.

Having an idle moment, I just checked Slow Travel for reviews of the poster's choice.

There is no review of Hotel Diocleziano in Rome, no review of Ponte Dei Sospiri and the sole review for the Hotel Monna Lisa is from 1999!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rather a waste of time to direct somebody over there, don't you think?

Bob, if you personally stayed at any of these hotels, why don't you post a review on Slow Travel? You've got an ad over there and a commercial interest in the website.

I realize people have friends and ads over on the Slow Travel website, but it really doesn't help Rockaway trying to book a trip.

Rockaway, the friends of Slow Travel will now come back and yell at me for objecting to constant back door advertising of their commercial website, so in case your thread turns to mush:

You can find CURRENT reviews of these places on TripAdvisor and Venere.com. That best use of your time is check these current reviews from people who ACTUALLY STAYED THERE, not pushing an agenda they don't reveal.

Fire away, Slow Trav buddies!

The reviews on TripAdvisor may be "current," but there have been complaints over the last couple of years about reviews planted by hoteliers, their friends or their competitors. Read reviews there carefully and disregard any that seem suspicious. I haven't heard of this problem on venere.com.

http://www.venere.com/hotels/rome/ho...ziano/#reviews

http://www.venere.com/hotels/florenc...-lisa/#reviews

http://www.venere.com/hotels/venice/...spiri/#reviews

More reviews:

http://www.booking.com/hotel/it/diocleziano.en.html

http://www.booking.com/hotel/it/monna-lisa.en.html

http://www.booking.com/hotel/it/al-p...ospiri.en.html

Bob, Bob, the Zeppster is after your blood again!

Zeppole is the reason that so many Fodorites have quit offering advice regarding Italy. Evidently the editor(s) at Fodor's approve of Zeppole to be the "I live in Italy" expert and since she is so snarky a lot of others that know about Italy have given up offering their thoughts and advice. Sadly the new posters have no idea that Zeppelo sometimes offers good advice and sometimes not.

We stayed at the Hotel al Ponte Mocenigo in Venice and I highly recommend it. Beautiful rooms & service:
http://www.alpontemocenigo.com/

And in Florence the Hotel Alessandra:
http://www.hotelalessandra.com/

Zeppole offering bad advice? Never! LoveItaly, off with your head!

There are also reviews on Italyby.com which I have always found helpful, as well as on bookings.com. They can only be submitted by those that have stayed there.

I try to ignore her contrarian ramblings--it is the kind thing to do since she is obviously not well.

Loveitaly--you are so correct. She has detered many knowledgable posters from offering advice for fear of her attacks. What a shame ! The Forum is the worse for it.

I'm well aware that zeppole is the last poster to need any aid, and I'm not even sure whether she'll approve that I'm chiming in here. But what some of you are writing here is simply contrarian to my sense of justice...
Bob, in your personal case, I do understand that you fail to fall in love with her, which is obviously a mutual feeling. And your respective approaches to advising people ARE definitely contrasting and conflicting, there's no way of denying that. (What I would like to say to both of you: each of your personal ways of giving advice is regularly useful to other posters, each to another group and type of posters, so both of them are valid.)
But what I'm having difficulty to accept is 1. that you are belittling zeppole's knowledge, and 2. that you claim "many" Fodorites have quit the forum because of zeppole.
1. Zerlina and LoveItaly, I'm disappointed. Both of you are long-time Italy top experts here on Fodor's... come on, it's simply beyond imagination that you're unable to cherish zeppole's knowledge. She knows her stuff; she has visited more places in Italy than most of us; she is highly educated re art, architecture, history, food, wine... honestly, since I know Italy pretty well, too, it doesn't happen THAT often that I'm taking notes and learning myself from any Italian postings here on Fodor's. It happened, for example, with your postings, Zerlina; with yours, LoveItaly; and with zeppole's, quite regularly. So what do you want? If you just don't like her personal style, tell us. But please don't demean the meat of the advice she's offering.
2. LoveItaly and Bob, who are those "many" Fodorites deterred by zeppole? For such a heavy accusation, I think it would only be fair to quote examples. I have been around for quite a while - twice as long as zeppole, and almost exclusively on the Italy board, so I should know those "many" deterred posters from the time before she had supposedly deterred them. Let's jump back in time - say four years ago, who posted on the Italy board regularly? ira - still around; Bob - still around; ekscrunchy - still around, and on very friendly terms with zeppole; LoveItaly - still around; zoecat - still around; nessundorma - left us (sadly!) long before zeppole joined us (I think she left in 2007); suze - still around; SusanP - still around, though less regularly than before; Grinisa - rarely seen nowadays, unfortunately; ellenem - still around; Traviata - stopped posting before zeppole joined Fodor's, I'm sure; annhig - still around; RufusTFirefly - not seen in a long time; tcreath - still around, though not traveling to Italy recently; Eloise - totally stopped posting (the sadest loss for the Italian forum IMO), but not because of zeppole: I had the privilege of exchanging a few email messages with her after she quit, and she was simply "tired of explaining twice a day how to get from Fiumicino to downtown Rome". Ah yes, and franco - still around, and on friendly terms with zeppole.
Ok, so I don't know about RufusTFirefly and Grinisa (who may have stopped posting for a number of reasons, maybe you'll tell us why). The rest of us, we're still here, even though I may have - involuntarily - forgotten some of the former regulars.

Franco, giving contrasting and conflicting advice is fine as long as everyone respects that each of us has opinions based on our personal life and travel history. Correcting inaccurate information is one thing, but confronting fellow Fodorites (whether directly or indirectly) and carping on differing points of view is inappropriate. I haven't been deterred by Zeppole, but I do ignore a lot of her "attitude." I feel sorry for the OP when a thread becomes a bewildering debate.

Jean, I'm not going to oppose what you're saying; but your statement doesn't oppose either what I was saying. My two points were just: belittling her knowledge (cf. above: "bad advice"); and claiming she deterred other Fodorites, without quoting whom exactly - both of which you, Jean, didn't.

I think there is always a temptation to recommend travel plans which one has enjoyed. (Which is why I never recommend the hotel in Florence where we stayed. Think dodgy plumbing, tissue paper walls, arguing Australians! in the adjacent room, and a fine view – of a multi story car park. But maybe we did not like it because we were both unwell for a couple of days.)

People say that they are going to Pisa to see the Tower. Others then suggest that the tower is nothing compared to the associated buildings, and maybe that’s true. It all depends on what one wants to see.

People say that they are going to Venice to “get lost”, possibly without realising that this will happen to them anyway, whether planned or not. Other posters will then suggest that they need to have some sort of plan in mind to make the most of their time, which is true.

The comment that “don’t worry about what you see – you’ll come back again” is true and helpful. When Lou and I first visited almost four years ago, we had little idea of where we would go after Venice and Verona, and even less idea of what we wanted to see – the classic definition of uninformed tourists. Fortunately one learns.

I never comment on the plans of people who are visiting Australia, unless it is just for factual information that they are requesting. The sort of travelling that I have really enjoyed in Australia is cycling long distances, driving really long distances, very primitive camping and trout fishing. Certainly not everyone’s cup of chai.

To each his/her own, I suppose.

Her attitude toward differing points of view has deterred me from posting on some threads.

The "meat of the advice" of much of what Zeppole offers seems to me to be the result of intensive Googling...

And to me at least - and I would have thought to Zeppole, who prides herself on *not* doing anything "touristy" - the mere mention in the current Piedmont thread of the Castello di Sinio - run by Americans for Americans - as a top-rated Piedmont "relais" is bad advice.

Zerlina, I'm finding myself in the position now (entirely my own fault, I know) of having to defend every single post by zeppole, which is not what I want, can or would do. But when posting the Castello di Sinio website on the Piemonte thread, this is what she wrote:
<I can't weigh in on your "splurge" stay, but I will pass along this website for you, not just because it is a well-regarded Castello relais (but you should check recent reviews as always) but because the "activities" page of the website is actually a very good sum-up of many of Piemonte's attractions.>
I think that makes fairly clear that she has no personal experience with that Castello ("can't weigh in on your splurge stay" and "check recent reviews"), and she also says the main reason for posting that website is their sum-up of Piemonte's attractions. So I think it would have been a good idea had you posted a heads-up about Castello di Sinio on that thread, but your qualification as "bad advice" seems overly severe IMO.

Which takes us back to my first point: Googling is no substitute for personal knowledge or experience, particularly when it comes to accommodations and restaurants. And there have been innumerable threads in which Zeppole has posted about both on the basis of Google searches; the Piedmont one was merely the one I had seen most recently. I too have certainly been known to Google, but only for specific points of information, such as occasional visits to the Palazzo Pamphilj, but I don't post about accommodations or restaurants on the basis of Google searches. In fact, I almost never post about either.

Taking your reprimand to heart, I shall now post - with all the deference you seem to think Zeppole, who rarely shows deference to anyone, deserves - about the Castello di Sinio on the Piedmont thread.