Villa Cora

Front desk and general concierge service was appalling. In general I found the front desk pretty dismissive. When we first arrived we sat up in our room for 40 minutes waiting for our luggage which would be right up to arrive. Then, parched from travelling, we decided to get something to drink and headed back up. There was some blame shirking comment that when we were back in our room they would bring it - despite the fact wed just sat in there for 40 mins, plus our presence wasnt exactly a necessity Over an hour passed before our luggage arrived. It was unbelievably hot when we visited and it would have been nice to shower and change on arrival after our journey! Cleaning - although very thorough, the cleaning staff were a total pain. They were in there the second we headed down for breakfast and then took so long to leave (despite us saying we needed the room), we ended up missing the last shuttle into Florence and our plan for the day was ruined. One of the cleaners was actually charging her phone on our sockets. That irked me slightly, felt a tad unprofessional. Billing - this one really finished it off for me. I (female) booked and paid for this entire trip - to celebrate two big birthdays for my mum and my younger brother. Out of the three of us, my brother was the only male. He had had zero communication with the Villa and they didnt even have his details until he handed over his passport at check in. First day him and I go down to the pool to get a cup of tea (which seemed to be a mammoth ask in itself but thats a different story). When we finished, the bill arrived and was automatically passed to him. He commented that that was pretty sexist, being the nice and progressive young man that he is, but I said it was probably just an error. It wasnt, however. Fast forward to check out and the entire bill had been transferred into his name from mine. It is pretty insulting that 1.

We booked a double room for my partners birthday- instead of a double bed it was 2 singles mattresses pushed together with one sheet over the top. Really uncomfortable sleep and not at all romantic. The room was also in a small outhouse by the road, not in the main house - traffic noises and street lamp at night were not great and room was generally quite small and not very ornate like in the pictures. Not great value for 800 euros per night. Breakfast at an additional 38 euros per person was also pretty basic with no a la carte options included in that and old eggs, bacon etc sitting out. None of this ruined the stay but not up to the same standard as usual 5 star hotels in this price bracket.