I went to Castello di Leonina for a 1 week long break at the end of May, when Tuscany has a very pleasant weather as I well know, being an Italian myself: not too hot and definitely not overcrowded with tourists. The Relais Il Castello di Leonina was the first stop of a drive around Val di Chiana and Val D’Orcia, just outside Siena and the location looked really amazing.
I choose to stay 1 night there because I found it on a guide to Relais and small high standard hotels, its pictures of the white road with cypress on both sides impressed me most and I thought it would have made it the perfect location for the start of a holiday “under the Tuscan sun”.

Unfortunately when we got there at 7pm on a Saturday evening the first welcome I received from the place was the definitively distasteful smell in the lobby, the second was an even more unpleasant welcome at the reception desk.
In fact the lady there, immediately after checking my reservation, told me that it was impossible to have dinner at the restaurant. Of course I told her that one of the reason for staying in that place overnight was the restaurant itself and considering that that day had already been a full day of driving and moreover that the first village was at least 15/20 mins drive away, I was sure the chef would have accommodated 2 more people. We would hav been more than happy to wait in order to have dinner later in the night. She said she would have checked but that would imply we have to wait at least until 9.30 to know if we were so lucky to have the pleasure to get the coveted prize of the table at the restaurant.
When we reached our room the view was amazing but the bathroom in particular was not what you might expect from a 200 Euros per night stay…only 2 real towels and 2 small light cotton ones.
In order to kill the time till the potential dinner and relax, we decided to stroll around and check out the swimming pool and hot tub…well we realised that the hot tub was under refurbishment and guess what? The swimming pool wasn’t cleaned up so that the water was a vivid green instead of light blue! Ridiculous because end of May with 25+ degrees, the swimming pool in the middle of the countryside makes the difference among different places! They were so bold to say that unfortunately given the very bad weather during the week it was impossible to do it…well we were in Tuscany for 3 days already and trust me, not one cloud…

Finally at 10pm we showed up at the reception of the hotel (because they kindly asked us not to go directly to the restaurant…mah) to qenquiry about the famous table at the restaurant and guess what? Obviously there was not a single available table as foreseen by the clairvoyant receptionist so che gave us the name of a restaurant and, as said, it was 10pm on a fine May evening in Italy. We were clever enough to ask the logorroic lady at the reception to kindly make the phone call to book the table for us, not because of potential crowdiness but to avoid that the kitchen would have already closed by the time we got there. Lucky we did it because the receptionist had basically to beg the restaurant to give us a table. Of course when we passed by the restaurant at the hotel we salivated for, we were very surprised in seeing the famous crowd there, but as you can imagine there were at least 2 free tables…

Bottom line, do not stay in Castello di Leonina because it is not worth the money compared to all nice places of the same standard and even cheaper that you can find in the same area. Luckily my week continued in some other much nicer places with far better service and same wonderful location, the Tuscan valley of Chiana and Orcia