Palace Hotel - Viareggio, Italy     

They were NOT able to honor the reservation me and my wife had for the night after our wedding party on June 21st. One of the suites was reserved and confirmed the night before by our aunts as a wedding gift, they use the facility often with some association. We still don't know what went wrong (we had to listen to a lot of silly stories from the staff) but here are the facts: we arrived at the hotel at 4AM after the party and the night concierge told us that the only reservation he had under our name was for a twin bed room. Obviously not ours, still all dressed up after the wedding! He said the only room available was that, and did not offer any help of looking for another room somewhere else as you would expect from any decent hotel concierge. He was even rude with us and our only choice was walk out, and drive an hour or so to my hometown. The following morning they called our aunts (too early for a Sunday morning) saying that they looked for us in other hotels close-by offering to pay the night for us. No comment to that! We're still waiting for formal excuses from them, while the only thing they're offering is a free stay... but they cannot give us our wedding night back!

we went on a 'girly' week away to Tuscany and used the palace hotel, in viareggio as our base. the hotel is very very clean and we had half board, although we did not necessarily want it, we were surprisingly amazed at the spread for breakfast and the three course dinner in the evenings was wonderful. we had a three bedded large room and a single room which were fine and the sheets changed almost every day. The palace hotel is a more traditional style hotel with a beach opposite and a sea view, the beach/changing rooms/pool near the beach and facilities were immaculate, the beach looked like it had been ironed each day and we were pleasantly surprised. lovely shops in the resort, and we visted Florence, Lucca, Pisa, Forte de Marni , Santa Margarita and Porto Fino all by train which was very reasonab le and very efficient. the weather was great while we were there and rained the day we left., but we had a great time and did not stop laughing the whole time. The only aggravating part was the hassle from the street vendors with handbags for sale, which was very annoying and you can be fined in Italy if you are caught with a 'fake' by ?1000 by the police so beware if you fancy one. It was a great trip and we loved Lucca and Santya Margarita and would probably stay there next time. Porto fino was gorgeous but you would have to take our a mortgage to stay in their hotels.