A group of eight women will travel to Tuscany in the Fall, 2006 for one week. For another week, I plan to meet my husband in Rome for one week. I am the official trip planner. I've been reading many threads on this site for Rome and Tuscany. We women want to stay in a villa. We would also like to rent scooters for short market trips. Any comments about this? I'm having second thoughts on both ideas. Any suggestions are welcome.

The idea of renting a villa is something we'd like to do if we were visiting Tuscany with a good-sized group such as extended family members. It seems a bit cheaper to rent a villa than a few hotel rooms. So I think your idea is a very nice one.

Unless you plan to spend ALL of your time at the villa, you'll need transport of some kind. However, I'd recommend cars. Scooters are dangerous, even for people accustomed to riding two-wheelers in Italian traffic. Scooter and motorcycle riders get knocked off, run over, and killed very frequently on Italian roads.

If you can, find a villa in walking distance of at least a village, so that you can do your shopping on foot. I don't know much about villas, but this one belonging to a friend of mine might fit the bill: http://casadellozoppo.it/

best regards,
Deirdré Straughan

www.straughan.com (personal)
www.tvblob.com (work)

Hi the,

I agree with DS, a villa for 8 would be vry nice, if you plan on doing your own cooking, making your beds and washing dishes.

Scooters are highly contraindicated.

Agree with those above, skip the scooter idea; you'll thank us later for this. A great website for finding a villa is slowtrav.com. Click on Italy.

I was the planner for a group of 10 who visited Rome and the Val d'Orcia area of Tuscany in April 2005. We were thrilled with the house we rented just outside Pienza. We rented Villa nel Oliveto, which sleeps 10, through InTuscany (intuscany.com, click on villas at the top of the page) and were very happy with all the arrangements.

I agree--go to slowtrav.com for good ideas on villa rentals but skip the scooters. Location is the key---start there.