A Casa di Olga

Wonderful place, exactly what we wanted for our stay in Florence. European in every way. Very charming building. Very comfortable bed. Spacious with a lot of storage. The kitchen was great and suited our needs perfectly. The apartment was stocked with everything we needed. We loved the neighborhood, easy to walk to the center of Florence but also extremely close to the major bus lines. Close to the San Jacopino neighborhood, with restaurants and stores that are much more reasonably priced than the tourist district. Lorenzo and Bernadetta were perfect hosts and went out of their way to accommodate our needs, including an early check in, storing our luggage, and allowing an out of town guest to stay for a couple days.

Clean, practical, close to Santa Maria Novella train station (7-10 min walking) and to the city center (15 min). Friendly owners, gave us map for Florence and tips for restaurants. Free wifi. Thin walls, you can hear the neighbours. Very small shower. Nowhere to put clothes in the bathroom. No English TV channels, only one French channel. Fridge not cool enough.

Lorenzo is a very very nice person. Unfotunatly however, the place itself is full of problems. Our bed was actually two beds joint together; the pillows were unspeakably bad....To go downstairs during the night proved to be more unconfortable than one could envision by looking at the pictures. Though the kitchen has appliances, there are no oulets to use them. While the bed upstairs gets unconfortably hot, downstairs is significanlty colder. Visitors can not adjust the heating system... The house is a little too far from the center and there are very few options for eating in the neighborhood (though San Jacopino proved to be a very nice place). The bathroom is a little too small. Though the apartment was clean, looking back at it I feel the place is overall unhealthy. The wifi system is annoying (one needs to repeat everything over and over). We ended up moving to a different place where for only 5 euros more we were closer to the center, in much more confortable conditions withbreakfast included. We have to conclude that Casa di Olga was a mistake, and I still can not understand why it was rated as fabulous (which helped to mislead us).