savannah300

Hi all . . . I'm going to Italy in March of 2007 with several friends and we have been thinking about renting a villa/farmhouse/apartment outside of Florence in the Tuscany countyside. Who has done this and what rental companies were used and could be recommended to me? I've been looking online and there are any number of companies that rent properties but obviously it's hard to know which are reputable, so I figured I'd ask here. Also, do you know if these properties can be booked for just a few days rather than a week? We also thought to rent a car for the period of time we'll be in the Florence area and I would like to know what car rental agencies I should contact for information . . . the usual suspects like Hertz and Avis or just wait till we get to Florence? I appreciate any info you can give me. I would imagine that we need to get moving now on a rental property. I would think they book up rather fast.

Thanks for your help

gracejoan3

www.vrbo.com and www.holiday-rentals.com are both good ones to look at for rentals. You will then deal directly with the owners of the properties. There are many other, of course.

Car rentals: Auto Europe is a good rental. They also have lease buy-backs.
I found the Kemwel lease buy-back to have much better prices for my trip in Sept/Oct.

Enjoy your searching....
Joan

bobthenavigator

Spend an hour at slowtrav.com for all things about rentals in Tuscany. March will be cold--be sure you ask about heat--those farm houses can be brutal.

LizNYC

I have used rentvillas.com to rent a penthouse/villa in the centre of Florence . .

I highly recommend them. Actually, the rates were reasonable and villa more beautiful than the photographs . .

Mimar

I second bobthenavigator's suggestion of www.slowtrav.com. It's a mine of information about traveling in Itlay and especially about renting villas with reviews of specific rentals as well as rental agencies.

I prefer to rent from agencies rather than directly from an owner. For agencies, you can use a credit card. That's 2 lines of defense. The agency has checked out the rental. And you can dispute a charge via the credit card company.

When you rent from an owner, how to make the deposit is always a problem. Mostly they want direct transfers to their bank account, which can cost in fees as well as the exchange rate.

Do not wait until you get there to rent a car. It's much more expensive that way. Lots of people recommend Autoeurope. (By the way, in Italy you are required to have an International Driving Permit and to buy the CDW.)

kevincohr

There are lots of holiday rental web site out there, and holiday-rentals.com is certainly one of the best for Italy. However, if you want to look at other sites, there are about 20 different European sites listed on www.compareownerholidayrentals.com . As long as you book in advance, you should have no trouble finding someone who will rent to for just a few days in March, as that is not such a busy period, although the costs might be a little higher to cover the cleaning etc.

j_999_9

Second what bob said about heat, for two reasons:
1. Make sure there is heat.
2. Ask if there's a separate charge for heat, etc.
Friends of ours rented a nice place in Tuscany but at the end of the rental they got hit with an outrageous heating bill that nearly equaled the cost of the rental.

kangamom

When we went several years ago we used an agency called bravo holidays. Their website is www.bravohr.com or www.hipvillas.com. The owners of the company are italian and most of the houses that they have on their website are houses of their own friends that are available for rent.

I think they have some Florence rental apartments as well.

Our experience with them was fantastic and the house and experience we had was so amazingly perfect, I'm constantly in search of that "vacation perfection", but have yet to experience it again.

Ethan01

We used a company called to-tuscany. They were eally helpful and had a lot of great places. Rentvillas.com is also great but to-tuscany.com was a little cheaper

constant

In addition to using a rental company (which will usually add a significant markup to the price), you can rent directly from the owners. There's a good list on www.greve-in-chianti.com for the Chianti zone between Florence and Siena. The description of the property will say whether they rent for less than a week. This is usually the case with smaller apartments and less frequent for large villas which are costly to clean. If a Saturday to Saturday rental doesn't fit your requirements, think of renting two smaller places side by side. I can also recommend http://www.panzano.com/eleonora.htm