Pietrasanta is a great base for exploring northern Tuscany. We stayed here for our honeymoon and had a fabulous time.
The hotel is decorated with period furniture, antique padded sofas and impressive lamps. The first and second floors are accessible by a small but fascinating glass lift as well as from a beautiful original staircase.
The hotel rooms are described as having four poster beds, which is not the case. They are, however, very pretty canopied beds. The air conditioning in the room was very effective, although a little noisy at night. We couldn’t work out how to turn it off so we overcame this by leaving a window a tiny bit open at night and this made it stay off. All the electrics in the room are remote controlled and we found this a little bit challenging! We are by no means technophobes, but it was a bit over the top.
The beautiful marble bathroom was very luxurious and we absolutely loved the hydro-massage bath and shower. The room was very clean and the sheets and towels were changed daily.
Breakfast was lovely- cold buffet style. Cooked food was available at an extra charge, but we thought 9 euros was a bit steep for bacon and egg!
The hotel is very stylish and has an old fashioned charm which we loved. We didn’t feel that the pop-art paintings around the hotel really fitted in with the style of the hotel, although they are obviously something that the owners are very proud of. We fully appreciate the concept of pushing artistic boundaries but we personally did not feel that our experience was enhanced by having a huge portrait of Stalin hanging opposite us during breakfast, or from passing a picture of two poodles ( or were they lambs?) sharing a heart every time we went to our room.
We thought this hotel was lovely and the staff were generally friendly and helpful, but we did feel that they put more emphasis on the hotel than on their guests. For example, two members of staff were rearranging pieces of fabric around the breakfast table whilst being totally oblivious to the fact that we were standing behind them waiting to get some food!
The hotel website is English friendly, but in actual fact the staff we encountered spoke very little English and we didn’t really get many answers to the questions that we asked. When we asked the man at Reception where we could find a certain place, he replied ‘I have to think about it’. He never got back to us with the answer, or explained that he didn’t know or understand. We also asked another member of staff about arranging a motor boat excursion as this is mentioned on their website, but he had no idea how to help us. There was a lady on Reception when we checked out and she had a much better understanding of English, but unfortunately she hadn't been on duty when we had needed to communicate.
We hope that this review doesn’t sound too negative because we really did have a wonderful time, and we did actually find the little idiosyncrasies of the place amusing. If you can speak a reasonable amount of Italian, or have a good phrase book, you might get on a bit better than we did!
On the whole, this is a luxurious and relaxing hotel which makes a great base for a touring holiday. We looked forward to going ‘home’ there at the end of every day.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
