Hotel Centrale - Florence, Italy 

This hotel has it all for a European city. Clean and central, with accommodating staff. I would rate Hotel Centrale a '9' in all these categories. But the extra surprises were the large rooms (unheard of for that price range in Europe) and the quietness of the hotel (our room had no street noise whatsoever - just the sublime ringing of church bells through the day) despite the fact the hotel is located steps away from tourist central in Florence, the Duomo Square. Finally, I have to thank the wonderful female day staff (sadly I never did get her name) who checked me and my friend out in record time and called a taxi and had it at the door of the hotel to get us to the airport in record time, this because I read our flight itinerary all wrong and we found out 70 minutes before our flight time that we had to be at Florence International Airport, a 30 minute drive from the hotel in good traffic. And we hadn't even packed yet! By some miracle the taxi driver got through Florence morning rush hour traffic to the airport in 35 minutes and the wonderful people at Swiss Air allowed us to board the flight to Zurich. We had only 15 minutes to spare. It is treatment from folks such as the staff at Hotel Centrale and Swiss Air who make your travels wonderful. And with the power of today's new word of mouth, the internet, these kindnesses are noted by prospective customers and they will respond with their dollars.