Hotel Elite

Our stay at Hotel Elite was fantastic! Not only was the room great with a prefect view, but the service from the Lady in the reception made us feel welcome and made sure we had plenty to do. She advised us on activities in Florence but also provided her personal knowledge of other destinations such as Lucca. We did have to walk to a neighbouring hotel for initial check-in, but instructions to do this were very clear, simple and told in advance. Not only do we want to come back to Florence, but we would gladly stay at this hotel again.

Regrettable Choice. Mosquitoes fly into the room through the louvers. Ghastly smell coming from drain in bathroom. You climb up 68 steep stairs to get to the room. Luckily, a young Pakistani man carried my suitcase. The check-in person wasn't there in the morning. I had to walk 250 meters to another hotel. The owner of the Elite was there. I pointed out we had waited on the curb and no one to register in the hotel in the morning. He was officious and said he was going to cancel my reservation. I said, "Look, where is the tourist police office? You have taken 7 days payment in advance." This seemed to bring him to his senses. The room was clean and the bed was OK. The cleaning woman was pleasant. But the only way we could sleep was to take towels and wet them and place them over the bathroom drain to keep the sewer gas from coming into our room. I had to close the outside door several times as persons leaving left the door open to anyone on the street. The only way to get wifi was to sit on the steps leading down to the next level.

Me and my boyfriend went to the first time to Rome and in the end of our journey we decided to visit Firenze for 2-days. We wanted a place to sleep and take a shower and that was it. The hotel is very well-located near Piazza Santa Maria Novella, as well as the train station. It is located in a very busy street so there's a lot of noise in the rooms. The room was really small and had two single beds instead of a couple bed. The room didn't have a toilet, which was, well... weird? We had to go to a shared bathroom to do our "stuff". It had though a small sink and a small poliban, that didn't work because there wasn't enough water pressure so we couldn't shower!!! This was horrible!!! There were mosquitoes in our bedroom when we arrived. We saw two coackroches in the stairs of the bulding, defenitely not cool to watch. Air-conditioner worked perfectly. The Internet Wi-Fi connection just didn't work, it was useless. The bulding doesn't have an elevator, since it's an building, but we were ok with that. Finally, the hostess, Natasha, was most sweet lady I met in all Italy. She helped us to navigate through the city with her "magical map", gave us a lot of hints about which places to visit, to have a nice dinner, to take public transportation, etc. She was very kind and professional. We wont be back to this hotel, we believe with more 20€-30€ you can find a better place and avoid this issues. (Please give a raise to your magnific hostess!)