Hotel Villa Liana - Florence, Italy     

Booked this hotel after reccomendation from family member as a quaint, well located hotel. Location was great, just 10 mins walk to the sites on quiet street away from the masses of tourists! We walked from bus station which was about 30-40 mins on cobbled streets so if you have lots of luggage i would get taxi from bus station! We stayed in a lovely spacious room, room 5, On 2nd floor. Lovely view over garden and nice and clean. We did hear of guests complaining on the ground floor with a room looking at a wall! So if you do book ask for a nicer room! We were happy with room 5. Breakfast was fantastic and staff very helpful. No lift, so we had to lug our bags up a large flight of stairs. No staff offered to carry bags up. So if you have poor mobilty this may be an issue. Also breakfast is on 1st floor so 2 large flights of stairs would have to be climbed. Overall a very pleasant stay, but ask for a good room!

We stayed at the hotel Liana on my birthday. It was supposed to be a special treat, but it turned out to be a special nightmare. We were given a "garden" room on the ground floor. Its connection to the garden was that it faced a garden wall. The room was very basic and the furniture arrangement totally defied common sense. Our bathroom was only accessible after we removed the desk chair. The bathroom was very basic and very small, ones elbows were in danger of getting abbreviated when brushing hair. There was a stench in the room when we arrived, but we attributed it to the city problems. It turned out that the problem was a stench from a toilet across the hall. We could not get any sleep as the toilet was used frequently during the night and the door of that toilet was slammed each time. The lack of any sound proofing made it appear as if someone was right in our room. To make a reservation we first contacted the hotel via e-mail to make inquiries regarding availability and prices. We were offered a room at a rate of 150 euro a night. We made a final reservation by phone because we did not want to give our credit card number via e-mail. When we were checking out we were charged 170 euro a night. The person who corresponded with us via e-mail and offered 150 euro per night, was not working the day we were checking out and the staff claimed that they had no knowledge of that original rate quote, since our correspondent left no notes to that effect. The e-mail offering that rate was apparently not sufficient. I wrote a letter to the hotel owner/ manger describing the experience but received not even a word of apology - it was ignored. I would suggest that travelers to Florence IGNORE THIS HOTEL.