My wife, her parents and I just returned from a 10-day trip to Italy. We stayed at the Hotel Botticelli in Florence for 3 nights. It was only a 10 minute walk from the train station, right past the central market. This was an excellent location, close to Santa Maria Novella and the Duomo. Florence is an easy town to navigate, so as long as you're near the city center, you'll be fine. My wife and I got the standard room, but her parents had the superior room. If you're on a budget, the standard room is fine. It was clean and had a queen sized bed and mini-bar/fridge. If you're willing to spend a little more, I think the superior room is worth the money because you add a lot more size to the room and have chairs where you can sit and more space to spread out your luggage. My wife and I were tripping over our suitcases and our souvenirs to some extent. We managed just fine because our hotel was more or less a place to sleep. That leads me to the main drawback - street noise. Our rooms were facing the street over the entrance to the hotel. There is a wonderful restaurant just steps from the hotel called Osteria Pepo - a must try! But beyond that, there is another restaurant on the corner that's set up in outdoor tents - right across from...My wife, her parents and I just returned from a 10-day trip to Italy. We stayed at the Hotel Botticelli in Florence for 3 nights. It was only a 10 minute walk from the train station, right past the central market. This was an excellent location, close to Santa Maria Novella and the Duomo. Florence is an easy town to navigate, so as long as you're near the city center, you'll be fine.

My wife and I got the standard room, but her parents had the superior room. If you're on a budget, the standard room is fine. It was clean and had a queen sized bed and mini-bar/fridge. If you're willing to spend a little more, I think the superior room is worth the money because you add a lot more size to the room and have chairs where you can sit and more space to spread out your luggage. My wife and I were tripping over our suitcases and our souvenirs to some extent. We managed just fine because our hotel was more or less a place to sleep.

That leads me to the main drawback - street noise. Our rooms were facing the street over the entrance to the hotel. There is a wonderful restaurant just steps from the hotel called Osteria Pepo - a must try! But beyond that, there is another restaurant on the corner that's set up in outdoor tents - right across from the market. This place was a magnet for rowdy Americans and their very loud, boisterous talking traveled through the quaint medieval street like a wind tunnel and blasted right into our windows as we were trying to sleep. Also, the vendors from the market would close up their carts and wheel them past the hotel to put them away for the night. You could hear the carts squeak and shake on the cobblestone as they passed by. There is also a corner market run by gypsies right across from the hotel entrance. They were fine and caused no trouble at all - except that they would take frequent smoke breaks and you could hear them talking plain as day right outside the window. We were warm and had to keep our windows open, but ended up shutting them partway through the night since we couldn't sleep. The noise was still audible, but more muted with the windows closed.

The hotel served free breakfast every morning, which was quite good, and had one computer with free Internet access. The staff was extremely friendly and helpful. I had one lady call a restaurant to confirm our reservations one night, which she did graciously.

Overall, the location is great, the rooms are clean, the breakfast is good, the...More