Sandy Knows About the Best Boutique Hotels in Tuscany
I met Sandy on a delayed flight to Naples four years ago. We were stuck on the tarmac for two hours and she spent most of it telling me exactly what was wrong with the hotel she had just left and exactly what she should have booked instead. By the time we landed I had three pages of notes and a new friend with very strong opinions about thread counts. When I decided to put together something on Tuscany, Sandy was the only person I called.
Sandy has stayed in more boutique hotels than she can count, and she made her feelings clear within the first ten minutes of our conversation. Not the grand ones with doormen and golden lifts, she told me, but the small ones, the converted farmhouses and the narrow townhouses with six rooms and a terrace where the owner brings you wine at seven and stays to talk for an hour. She has been going to Tuscany for fifteen years and she has never once stayed in a chain. This is what she knows.
Tuscany rewards people who do their homework, Sandy says. The region is enormous, and the gap between a place that looks beautiful in photographs and one that is actually beautiful to stay in is wider here than almost anywhere else in Europe. She learned this the hard way on her second trip, when she booked somewhere in the hills outside Siena that turned out to be a renovation project with guests. She has not made that mistake since.
What to look for before you book
The first thing Sandy checks is whether the owner lives on the property. The second thing is breakfast. In Tuscany this matters enormously. The third thing, and this is the one people forget, is noise.
The places Sandy keeps going back to
The best stays she has had in Tuscany have been in the Val d'Orcia, between Pienza and Montalcino. For the towns, Sandy likes Lucca over Florence for staying. Cortona is worth mentioning too.
The thing most people get wrong
They book too far out of the way because the photographs are better. Beautiful and convenient are not mutually exclusive in Tuscany. You do not need to choose the most remote option to have a good time.
She also says: do not book July. June is better, September is better still, and October is honestly the best month of all.
Your friend, Fuschia