L'Andana - Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy 

L'Andana - I dropped by last weekend (we were invited to the concert of Academia Bel Canto / Solti Foundation) to do a kind of quick due diligence and what I saw was quite impressive and a very interesting combination of Holiday in Italy - Top Dining - Beautiful Setting - Can do Golf (soon)! Here are my few points to it: - SET this is quite impressive, with the long pine tree alley and the drive-up; its Toscana at its best and a postcard dream, except its alive and you can play a role in it. - HOTEL FACILITIES Following a longer renovation we now have a Spa and a really nice number of Hotelrooms - 33 (soon to be expanded by another 14 next to the Golfcourse). The pool is nicely hidden in the beck but provides for a cool place to go - it has a bit of a pool scene when the Ferraristi show up. - FOOD The hotelfood is delicate with a strong focus on the local produce. THE TOP however, is its proximity to Trattoria Toscana - a restaurant run by Allain Ducasse (who was there when we had dinner there). Exquisite. - ROOMS i had no chance to visit them but the impression is quite good as they all seem to lead into a court and have a glass wall, old and new blends well here. SUMMARY The Hotel is a supergood deal if you go there outside of main season and is priced at the high end in main season. However, you wasnt to spoil yourself, GO THERE!!

We stayed at L'Andana for only 2 nights last summer while on our honeymoon. We wished we had stayed a little longer, but the hotel was a little too expensive for our wallets :( The grounds are beautiful, but it can be a terror to find. Beware - make sure you have exact directions if you are driving. We drove from Rome and became VERY familiar with every gas station and bar within a 5 mile radius of L'Andana as we stopped to ask for directions. The hotel is like a movie set. You can't believe that it's real. The lobby/kitchen/library area is wonderful - you feel like you are staying in someone's really, really, really nice home. The hotel rooms are ENORMOUS. The bathroom was about as big as our whole hotel room in Rome. The bath products in there were the best. I wanted to stockpile them and bring them back to the US with me, but my husband refused to carry 100 little bottles of lotion. The pool is great. It was over 100 degrees every day that we were there, so it was very refreshing to dip in. It's obviously cooled because the water was very, very chilly. The spa was wonderful as well, but BEWARE... make your spa reservations well in advance. We tried to make our appointments the day before we wanted to come in and they were completely booked and had been for a month. The girl working there at the time was kind enough to come in on her day off to pamper us. My husband and I each received a scrub/massage/wrap that lasted about 2.5 hours. It was heaven!! You also gain access to the sauna and spa pools when you have treatments and they were great as well. We ate at the fancy restaurant (can't remember the name) on the grounds and it was probably the best meal I've ever eaten. Very pricey, but worth it. The food is so fresh it tastes like nothing I've ever had before. Take chances while you are there and eat things you would not normally order - you will thank me. The hotel's food was good, but very, very expensive. The included breakfast was by far the best meal. You get to walk into a kitchen and pick and choose what you want. So delicious and so much fun! Lunch was amazing too, but again, very expensive. One night they had a barbeque, which was OK. Again, very expensive. The food was good, but we are from Texas, so our idea of barbeque is a little different and we were a little disappointed, but whatever, we're picky. If you have some money to splurge and you want to feel like a king and queen - stay here!!