Top 10 Saida Hotels

First, the wonderful things: this property is located right out in the gorgeous chianti region but still easily accessible from Florence. We visited in Sept. 2021 and it was the perfect time of year. The grounds themselves are picturesque, and exactly what we were hoping for from a quick jaunt into the area (we only had one night sadly). We ended up loving it there so much that we canceled a planned activity the day of our departure to enjoy a couple more hours in the gorgeous setting... it really feels like a dream. The night we were there, a major storm hit very quickly and unexpectedly, and we actually lost power for much of the evening--it was quite the adventure! It ended up actually being really fun however as everyone got into the spirit of things, and we all ate dinner by candlelight in the dining room which was very very fun and atmospheric. The owners (a friendly and jovial couple) circulated amongst the tables and were just such a delight, it really made us feel like we were part of a community. The bed was heavenly and the food and wine delicious. We were already talking about coming back someday even before going to bed. However... there was a ”but,” unfortunately. While most of the staff were absolutely wonderful, including all the servers, there was a woman working the front desk/admin (seemed to be the older of the two women who worked the check in/guest services desk) who was so condescending and unhelpful it honestly soured our stay quite a bit, such that it had us reconsidering returning at all, despite all the other wonderful things about the Villa. (The younger of the two women was lovely). We had arranged a private car transfer through the property to drive us to and from Florence; initially, as mentioned, we had planned an activity (not booked with Villa Le Barone) on the day of departure and so the transfer was going to take us to the activity first, then on to Florence. When we cancelled the activity, we asked if we could change our transfer to Florence accordingly. I completely recognize that these kind of logistical changes can be hard to manage last minute, so we were fairly flexible with timing--our only requirement was that we arrive in Florence sometime between 5pm-10pm to be able to check into our Airbnb; we didnt feel this was too big of an ask. We also would have understood if the answer had simply been no, that was not possible. However, the way we were treated by the front desk woman genuinely was as if we were causing her no end of unreasonable difficulty, and that we were being incredibly demanding by asking to make such a change. It really threw us because everyone else working there had been so gracious. The communication from her was incredibly poor, and we had to follow up with her multiple times ourselves just to find out the most basic of information from her. She spoke to us as if we were irresponsible, inexperienced teenagers instead of well-traveled mid-thirties professionals (physician and pharmaci