Before You Even Begin to Look at Specific Properties
We're looking for the perfect house. Will you help us?
No. If you’re looking for perfection, we’re
not the people to help you. Others may claim to be able
to, but not yet having been elevated to the pantheon,
we do not. And we mean this. What we rent you will not
be perfect, and that’s a promise.
We don't speak Italian. Will we have problems in Italy?
Not really. Moreover, we don't demand you be able to
recite La Divina Commedia by heart in Italian as a prerequisite
for renting an apartment for a week in Rome. Italians
are marvelously friendly people as a rule, and believe
us, they've seen it all. Many Italians speak rudimentary
English, especially virtually all waiters, and if the
first one you ask for something doesn't understand,
ask someone else. Smiling, gesturing, and pointing are
useful.
The most important question of all. You must be absolutely honest with yourselves – and with us – about your standards and your expectations. If you're accustomed to staying at the Connaught in London or the Carlyle in New York or the Huntington in San Francisco or the Four Seasons everywhere, you may not be happy in a rustic farmhouse in a genuinely rural setting making your own bed. Can you really live without hotel service? Can you live with your sheets and towels changed weekly?
Renting a villa or apartment or cottage in Italy is not the same as staying in hotel. If you rent a cottage at Cape Cod for a month and the light bulb burns out, or the toilet paper or soap runs out, you replace it by going to the store and buying a new one. You take the garbage out. You make your beds. There is no concierge. You make your own plans for hikes or daytrips, and you make your own restaurant reservations. And in general, these same rules of common sense apply in Italy as well. Property owners are not hotel concierges, although they are often -- not always – generous in giving advice. If traveling independently intimidates you, be honest about it and stay in a hotel where such concierge services are (supposedly) included. In short, when we want hotel services, we go to hotel. If you want the same, we give you the same advice.
We believe in being completely candid with you. We
know these properties personally. In our written descriptions,
when we say a place is "rustic" or "simple",
we mean it. When we say it's "truly deluxe",
we mean it. But we and you may have vastly different
definitions of these words, and it is extremely important
that we understand our respective standards. When we
say "rustic", we don't envision Laura Ashley.
If you do, then please say so. This is perhaps the most
crucial part of our work with you.
So why is renting a villa or apartment any better than a hotel?
The reason many clients give is precisely that they're tired of the type of travel which involves packing and unpacking and moving from hotel to hotel every couple of days. We find most people hate that kind of travel.
Moreover, if you're two or three couples traveling together, staying in hotel defeats the purpose of why you're presumably together in the first place: to socialize. We don't think that socializing in a hotel lobby makes it, when compared to your own living room.
Staying for 2 weeks in a hotel if you're a family with children? Forget it. An accommodation of your own will let you have real quality time together. Perhaps even more important from a practical point of view, food is so much easier with children when you've got your own place. It isn't that you have to cook every night, or at all. But a kitchen gives you the capability of doing takeout, heating food up, and dining on real dishes, not paper plates.
In another area of concern, clients have repeatedly told us over the years that they're tired of the superficial. They want to get an in-depth look at one particular area, whether it be a full immersion into Rome or Venice, exploration of the Tuscan or Umbrian hilltowns, or simple relaxation on the Amalfi Coast or on Capri.
To us, the best thing about renting a house is the
how the rhythm of our daily life becomes transformed.
Whether we're in the country or the city, in the mountains
or by the sea, we love getting up and out on an excursion
early. We enjoy having a big lunch out. But after consuming
that big lunch, often washed down with several glasses
of wine, we can think of no more alluring prospect than
returning to our apartment or villa or farmhouse or
cottage, taking out our mystery novel, and relaxing.
Relaxing without a claustrophobic hotel room to call
home, relaxing with the ability to raid the refrigerator,
with the ability to jump into the pool, with the ability
to throw together a salad in the evening and not go
out to endure, yet again, the full 3-hour ceremony.
Renting a house allows your trip to become a real vacation.
Is renting cheaper than a hotel?
Not necessarily. Take a city apartment, for example. We have some truly beautiful 1-bedroom apartments in Rome, Florence, and Venice in prime locations. They run in the range of $1,300 to $2,500 for a single week’s stay, less per week for a longer stay.
Now, it's quite true that you can find a 3rd- or maybe even a 2nd-class hotel in this same range or less, including, of course, daily maid service. So we readily admit that staying in a hotel can be cheaper, though with ordinary 3-star hotels in Rome, Florence, and Venice running 250 euros per night or more, it’s hard to imagine a hotel being advantageous in terms of cost.
But again, the whole experience is different. Having your own apartment with a living room, sometimes a fireplace, a separate bedroom, and a kitchen is entirely different from staying in a hotel room. You may not get the daily maid service (although this can often be arranged), but you get a lot of space and charm which, to our mind, more than compensate. The ability to experience shopping the produce markets and preparing your own lunch with fresh ingredients is a positive one, to say the least.
Finally, even sticking strictly with cost considerations, we would argue that the true comparison should be between an apartment and a hotel suite, not a hotel room. If this is the measure, then the apartment wins hands down. If you're a group of three couples renting a luxury villa with pool in the countryside for $5,000 per week split three ways, we think you get yourself a bargain.
If you're a couple with two kids renting a cottage
for $2,000 a week, we think that's a bargain these days,
at least in Italy. If you're used to staying in deluxe
hotels at $400 to upwards of $800 or more per night
for a room (a room, not a suite), we think a city apartment
at $2,000 per week is a real bargain.
What does "the countryside" mean in Italy?
If you decide it's a country vacation you want, be sure to remember the following:
The countryside means real country: not a condominium built around a golf course.
The Tuscan and Umbrian countrysides have been largely kept free of pollution and pesticides. Thus, the natural environment is populated by insects and lizards which are natural and necessary for a balanced ecosystem. Their presence has nothing to do with lack of cleanliness. If you can't deal with the possibility of finding a spider in your bathroom, ask yourself if the countryside (or renting) is what you really want.
Water is at a premium in the countryside, and water conservation is a must. If a party of 8 people insists on all taking half-hour showers each day in August, water will run low and may run out. You will not be happy campers. The Queen of the Netherlands sits in her country house in Tuscany with the same water limitations as everyone else. If you can't do the same as the Queen of the Netherlands, then you should be in a hotel in Vegas.
The same story goes for electric power. It comes as
a surprise to some guests that an Italian castle, for
example, was not originally constructed to house American
tourists on holiday. The Italian government deliberately
limits the amount of electricity supplied to the countryside.
Interruptions do occur, particularly in the height of
the season, and especially when more than one major
appliance is used at once. Turning the dishwasher and
a hairdryer on at once can result in electricity cut-off.
You must be prepared to adapt to such occurrences with
a sense of humor. If you know you are the type who won't
adapt, we will respect you far more if you choose to
go to hotel than if you insist on going forward with
something you're inevitably not going to be happy with.
We come from California where there are no bugs. We’ve heard that insects, flying and otherwise, are a big problem in Italy. Will our rental have window screens?
The likelihood is no, but the situation is changing slowly – glacially slowly. Italians cannot accept the concept of window screens. They argue that it makes them feel claustrophobic. Or that the house would feel too “closed in”. On the other hand, if you’ve ever walked down a street in Rome, say, in the heat of the summer, you can tell where the foreigners live because they’re the only ones with their windows open. All the other windows (and shutters) are closed tight. Go figure.
A bigger problem in a country villa is that the windows do not conform to any standard size, as the building was often constructed centuries earlier. Installing screens would mean special ordering each and every item.
Again, things are changing. If it’s a big deal
to you, ask us, as we know what the story is in each
case. We try to keep our written descriptions up to
date in this regard, but it’s worth asking anyway.
What styles of properties do you offer?
Often, we’ll hear people say, “We’d like to rent a villa.” What does “villa” mean?
We tend to use “villa” interchangeably for
(a) freestanding luxury homes with (or without) their own private swimming pool and/or tennis court, those without pools tending to be in coastal resorts where there is easy access to the sea for swimming;
(b) more rustic freestanding farmhouses, with or without their own private swimming pools.
(c) freestanding cottages on an estate where, if there is a swimming pool, it is shared by all the renters of the cottages.
(d) apartments which form part of a structure and where facilities like the pool are shared. These apartments can be quite elegant and luxurious indeed. Other times, they are far more than decent but not fancy. The structure which has been divided up could be a grand noble palace; it could be a former farmhouse; it could be a mill or other rural outbuilding. The former status of these structures is no indication of the level of luxury to which the owner has restored them. In short, a former bishop’s palace could have been divided up into cookie-cutter, style-free units, while a much more “rustic” farmhouse might have been divided into a series of quite luxurious flats. You never know.
(e) flats or indeed entire houses, within cities.
Privacy I - Should we be concerned about at a villa where an owner or caretaker is resident?
Often, the owner or caretaker lives right on the property
in a separate dwelling. Some of you may feel that this
is an invasion of privacy. We in fact almost invariably
consider it to be a plus. If something goes wrong, the
owner is there to remedy it immediately. Plus, the owner
is most often an extremely interesting person to get
to know. Owners are not interested in intruding. They
have many arrivals and departures every year, and while
they are interested in your welfare, they are not especially
interested in monitoring your activities. Mostly, you
won't see the owner at all, even if s/he lives on the
property. There are exceptions to this; some owners
are too nice, and a few owners are more sociable than
some people like. If this is the case, we warn you in
advance.
Privacy II - What about privacy at a multiple-unit property?
This is a very common situation in Italian rentals. Vacanza Bella has just a few such properties, where a villa or farmhouse has been divided into apartments or where there are several smaller freestanding cottages dotted about. The grounds, pool, tennis court, and other facilities are shared. The only exceptions we make is for a few rare estates composed of a number of free-standing or virtually free-standing structures scattered widely about an estate, with shared facilities like a pool and tennis court. In fact, the feedback we get over and over again is that people actually prefer estates of this type over both the normal multiple-unit estates and independent farmhouses or villas. Families with children, in particular, welcome knowing other families, especially foreigners. As long as you can get away to your own truly private space and meet up with others at places like the pool. What doesn't work is just a bunch of apartments where you’ve got to listen to your neighbors’ TV, arguments, and conversations inside and out.
One thing, in fact, that we’ve never understood
about this concern: If you go to a hotel, there might
literally be hundreds of other people occupying the
same structure, people you run into in the lobby, hallway,
restaurant, bar, etc., etc. What’s the objection
to a similar situation in the Italian countryside?
How far ahead do we need to book?
Clients often ask us, "When do we have to make a decision?"
The flip answer is: Before the other guy does. That, since it only takes one other person to come before you and ruin your trip, especially if you had your heart set on that particular villa.
Before giving a complete answer to this question, however, we urge you please to call us no matter how short the notice. We may still have the exactly right place for you. It is by no means certain that a very popular villa might not by fluke have remained remain open for just your week, even if you call as late as two weeks ahead of time, even in peak season. We’ve seen this happen repeatedly over the years. So don’t be discouraged from asking. More likely, you'll have to make a few compromises, but most often we can find something for you far better than merely adequate. .
Obviously, flexibility on your part helps. If you've got to have the perfect apartment in the Dorsoduro section of Venice, with two absolutely equal bedrooms, each with its own en-suite bath and a terrace, then please give us more than two weeks' notice!
One thing we love about last-minute requests, though: There's no agonizing. We say what we've got. You take it or leave it. And that's it.
Rule of Thumb. If you’re looking for a free-standing house with 3 or more bedrooms, in the Tuscan or Umbrian countryside, with its own swimming pool, anytime between May and October, we suggest making a commitment one year in advance. Our most requested period in the year, bar none, is the last two weeks in June. If that is the period you want, then get your act together early, and we mean it. There aren't that many good free-standing villas to go around anyhow, and the competition, especially from European renters, is intense. Europeans know you've got to book way ahead; Americans are only now catching on.
A fall rental demands an even longer lead time than one in spring. Why? Because many people do their trip-planning at the same time for the following year, whether that trip is to be in May or October. Thus, in the fall of the preceding year, we are simultaneously receiving requests for both spring and fall of the following year.
City apartments are different. For a 2- or 3-bedroom flat in the center of Rome, Florence, or Venice, in the prime months of April, May, June, September, and October, usually 6 months’ advance notice is sufficient, and often you can find just the thing with 2 months’ notice or even less. Especially in Florence, many apartment owners won’t commit to a brief rental of a week or two much more than 3 months in advance. They get too many requests for longer periods to want to be bothered with a 1-week rental next October when you’re calling in January. But they might readily commit to that same week, if you call in July. So it isn’t guaranteed that calling early will get you what you want.
Another thing about cities: They don’t usually have seasons. Our experience now is that February and March are just as popular for rental as spring and fall months.
For other locations, less notice may be required, though at least 6 months is always good. But you never know. We have precisely two wonderful cottages on Capri. If you want the last two weeks in June, I may tell you now that you can probably wait until January to commit. But if two other parties come to us in the preceding November and commit themselves to those last two weeks in June, that means we don't have anything left for you.
For all rentals, it takes only one other person to have come along before you to ruin your chances for that one house you’ve just got to have.
Again: call us anyway. Some of the best houses have
gaps which may never be filled.
We have no restrictions as to time: when is the best time to travel to italy?
For the countryside and the coast, considering both heat and crowds, our opinion is mid-May or late September.
If you want to rent right in town, however, our advice
is different. For Rome, Florence, or Venice, our advice
as to the best time to travel is March or April (avoiding
the week before and the week after Easter) or November.
Alternatively, any winter month (except for Carnevale
in Venice). And finally – you won’t believe
this – August. Why August? Because if you can take
the heat, the cities are emptier than virtually any
other month in the year. Rome in particular literally
opens up. It’s the only month in the year when
in Rome you can drive sanely and park a car virtually
anywhere you please.
We’ll be traveling to Italy next week, and we’d like you to arrange a tour of some villas we might think about renting a year or two from now. Will you do this?
Yes, we will. But this takes time to arrange, and you must understand that we receive many such requests all the time, at all levels of seriousness.
We have two policies:
If a villa is occupied by guests, it cannot be pre-viewed, outside or in. There is no such thing as just “driving by” a villa occupied by guests.
We will arrange a visit of up to a maximum of 3 villas
for a fee of $500. If you decide to rent one of the
villas, the $500 is applied to the rent. Otherwise,
we’re sorry to say that there’s no refund.
We’re 4 couples. Can we all have equal bedrooms, each with its own bathroom?
Maybe, but probably you’ll have to take a house
with more bedrooms than you need. Keep in mind that
these are homes and not hotels – bedrooms are almost
certain to be at least somewhat unequal. Also, how few
bathrooms can you survive with? Most (but not all) Italian
houses, even super-deluxe ones, don't have a bathroom
for every bedroom. And even if they do, often the bathroom
isn't immediately adjacent. You have to decide –
and communicate your feelings to us honestly –
what you can and cannot live with. With enough advance
notice, you can find a close-to-ideal bed-and-bath arrangement,
but often not if you call at the last minute.
Can we get a villa with maid service?
Sometimes, and it depends just what you have in mind by “maid service”. Villas in the budget or moderate price range are entirely self-catering. It's like renting a summer cottage in Maine: You make the beds and wash the dishes and do the laundry. Linens are provided once a week, and that includes towels.
In higher-end houses – and in some more reasonably priced houses, too -- maid service can be arranged or is included in the rent. Maid service most often means someone who comes in each morning, or 2 or 3 times a week, to do housecleaning. Even in high-priced villas, the bed linens are not changed daily or even every other day. We change our sheets once a week, and this is the standard in Italy. If you want more frequent changes than that, then please go to a hotel or to another agency.
If housekeeping is included, it means just that: keeping the house clean. It does not mean doing your personal laundry and ironing, nor does it mean doing your food shopping, babysitting Junior, or cooking your breakfast. Such services are sometimes available, but not automatically. And you must pay extra for them at rates of between $12 and $20 per hour. Hours contracted between the owner of the villa and the housekeeper to clean the house cannot be transformed into hours dedicated to cooking and ironing. The housekeeper is hired by the owner to maintain the house for your and the owner’s benefit. Extra services are between you and the housekeeper and must be paid by you on the spot.
Cooking? Only truly deluxe villas and a few more reasonable farmhouses come with resident cooks. We can often arrange cooks, but do you really want one? Our experience is that clients who hire cooks actually use them only about 1/3 of the time. People feel too tied down by having to appear for meals at set times. But we're happy to make the arrangements, if you commit yourself to paying the cook even if you don't use the services on any particular day. The cook is doing this for a living and cannot depend on your last-minute whims.
Can you hire some from outside to come in and cook for you? Sometimes you can, and we know of such people in certain locations. But the owner must approve. You can’t just invite unknown staff into a luxury villa without the owner’s approval. To them, frankly, it’s an invitation to theft.
In some villas nowadays, there’s the ideal situation in terms of a cook: a person available when you want him or her. Often our housekeepers will cook. You don’t need to hire them every day, just when you want. Inquire about this possibility.
Domestic help in Italy is not cheap. Many of you may
have rented houses before in the Caribbean or Mexico.
If you have, you know that even a moderately-priced
house will come – at a minimum – with a maid,
cook, laundress, and gardener. In Italy, this is not
the case. Most domestic workers have union contracts
which cost an owner a minimum of $30 per hour and often
more. There is no such thing as "finding"
someone locally who has nothing better to do than iron
your sheets or cook you pasta. Such people exist, but
they know how much their services are prized. The Italy
of "non far niente" no longer exists. The
standard of living in Northern Italy is now among the
highest in Europe, higher than in Germany and France,
far higher than in the US. And labor relations are not
quite as one-sided as in the US. Work is paid at a rate
which at least bears some minimal relation to its actual
value, and domestic workers do not come cheap.
Can we get someone to do childcare for us?
Often, but not always, childcare can be arranged at
the property you rent. You should not, however, expect
to find an English-speaking childcare person. Childcare
in Italy is class-bound. Competent peasant women do
it, not yuppie teenagers. If you are going to need childcare,
ask us what is possible and not possible at a particular
property.
Will our villa be centrally heated?
Yes. But central heating in Italy varies in quality. In most properties, it works fantastically well. In a few, poorly. Rarely, it doesn't exist at all. In that case, don't think a fireplace will suffice. Or space heaters. Italy can be cold, especially a stone house. If you're going to Italy in late spring or early fall, you should rent a centrally-heated house. You may never turn it on. But give yourself the peace of mind that if it does turn cold, you will have it. We know which places are better than others in this regard. Ask.
Heating in Italy is nearly always charged as an extra,
either as a flat rate per diem or metered by consumption.
It can be very expensive. We had renters one recent
Christmas in an Umbrian villa where the heating charges
– metered, so accurate – ran approximately
$120 per day.
What about air-conditioning? Can't we get a villa with A/C?
We know 2 or 3 country villas where at least the bedrooms have A/C. But it’s only a handful. Why? Overwhelmingly because of cost and because of restrictions on electrical supply in rural areas. If you can't live without air-conditioning in a country villa, don't rent. Please. Go to a hotel.
A few seaside houses may have air-conditioned bedrooms.
In cities, more and more apartments are air-conditioned.
But in these cases, consumption is at your expense and
metered separately. Be prepared for a very high bill,
even $100 per day or more, especially if you insist
on maintaining the polar temperatures of Florida interiors
in summer. In fact, you’re not going to be able
to obtain those polar temperatures anyway, no matter
how much you fiddle with the remote. The best you’re
going to do is 15-20 degrees (Fahrenheit) below exterior
temperatures.
We’d like to go in April, and we’d like a house with a swimming pool. What can you offer?
A swimming pool in April? You’ve got to be kidding.
In April, you need to be asking about central heating,
not about a swimming pool. Pools in Italy are open June
through September, sometimes (maybe 5% of the time)
May and October as well. Pools are not heated by anything
other than the sun. Will the owners open the pool for
you in May if you ask? Sometimes. But in that case you’ll
have to pay the rental price for mid-season rather than
low season.
We’re 2 families with 3 children each. We think 3 or 4 bedrooms would be enough because the kids can double up or sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. In fact, they’d prefer to do so. What do you have to offer?
Unfortunately, the “doubling up” concept
is anathema to Italian owners who don’t want to
play host to a campsite. Any child old enough to occupy
a bed counts as a person. Each twin bed is assumed to
hold one person maximum. Each double bed is assumed
to hold two persons maximum. We can offer you some 5-
or 6-bedroom places for your group of 10 persons. But
3 or 4 bedrooms won’t accommodate all of you.
We want to rent, but we’re deathly allergic to cats (or substitute mold, dust, dogs, spiders, bees, etc.) Can you give assurances that at any particular house, we won’t have problems?
No, we can’t. We can make inquiry on your behalf,
but we can’t take any responsibility, financial
or otherwise, for your allergies.
We have an unusually well-behaved cat. Can we bring it with us?
The only pets you can bring to a house with you are
goldfish and sometimes dogs. Italian owners are surprisingly
welcoming of dogs. But in country properties, very often
there are big dogs already present as guard dogs, and
Vacanza Bella will not be responsible for the fate of
your Chihuahua in that sort of territorial environment.
You must ask permission to bring your dog(s), and this
will not invariably be granted. Cats are not allowed,
not only because Italian owners generally don’t
like them, but because too many other renters are allergic
to them or their recent presence. Nor are ferrets, hamsters,
pet pigs, mice, etc., allowed.