Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Help! I need serious Italy hotel help!
I'm trying to see whether I should book through European Destinations or on my own. Their budget package is slightly more expensive than what I'm finding for airfare alone! Plus it includes all hotels and trains between the various cities.
Of course, their budget package includes the cheapest 3 star hotels, and, well, this is more of a 4-star vacation, if you know what I mean! They do have more than 100 hotels in each city you can choose from (and the price may vary accordingly.) I'm trying to pick a couple hotels from their site and then price out booking that on my own. I'm TOTALLY overwhelmed! So far I have eight on my Venice list alone, and I haven't even looked at all the options. Once I pick all the hotels I want, the price of the package could increase by a grand or so. Add to that the fact that I just discovered we get travel discounts through Costco. I want to get the best deal possible, because I want to spend that money on expensive dinners and wine!
Anyway, I'm looking for a shortcut! Here are a few in Venice. Any experience with any of them? Also, please recommend your hotel. I can check to see if its on the list. In particular, we'd like to be close to San Marco, and would LOVE a private balcony, terrace or patio. Thanks so much!!!
Villa Igea
Ca' dei Conti
Palazzo Priuli
Bisanzio
Hotel Antiche Figure
Londra Palace
Saturnia
Locando Vivaldi
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
Re: Help! I need serious Italy hotel help!
Hi...we just did all of this last weekend for our honeymoon. We were looking on European Destinations, and used their website as a guideline to build our trip, but booked everything direct with the hotels, booked our own airfare, etc. I didn't find that the package was going to be THAT much cheaper on ED if we were not using the 3-star hotels. We also wanted to have the flexibility to change reservations directly with hotels, be in contact with them ourselves, etc.
We went through each city and sorted the hotels by the Traveler Opinions, and also evaluated the rates they had listed. We picked 5-10 in each city that we wanted to look at more closely and then went to the hotel's own website AND read reviews on TripAdvisor.com. We made our decisions from there.
It took us about 3 hours to go through four cities/locations and book 4 hotels.
I will PM you once I figure out which hotel we're staying at in Venice.
Not on your list of Venetian hotels, but we stayed at Palace Bonvecchiati, San Marco 4680, during the summer of 2009. It was by far, the nicest of the 3 hotels we stayed at during our Italy trip (Venice, Rome, Florence). But, I don't remember having a private balcony outside our room.
Blog: Call Me Imelda
We are staying here on our Italy trip in July. Both of my aunts stayed here, and it came highly recommended. 4 stars. We have a canal-view, but there is a garden area you can lounge in and have wine, breaskfast etc. GL!
http://www.casarezzonico.it/rooms.html
Mavjen - Palace Bonvecchiati is one of the hotel we can choose from. I'll check it out.
MIGal2008 - three hours?? I can't believe that! My internet connection must be slow or something. Did you book the hotels through their websites or travelocity or something? When are you going? Please do let me know which ones you choose.
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
Yes...about three hours..but we knew what we were looking for. I also work in the hotel industry (although we're not staying at any "branded" hotels) so I'm pretty familiar with hotel websites. Our priorities were: Good location (close to activities, attractions), ideally close to train station (since that is how we're getting from city to city), and within the budget range we were looking for (which is WAY more than we would normally spend on hotels, given I work for a major chain, but it's our honeymoon so we're going all-out).
We're going in July/August, so the prices are a bit cheaper.
We're staying at Boscelo Exedra in Rome, Castello Banfi in Southern Tuscany (FI's request), Hotel Brunelleschi in Florence and Ruzzini in Venice. We're happy with our choices....and feel that while they are pricey they will be worth it!