Gaiole in Chianti holiday villa: Gaiole in Chianti

Dear Sabrina
I meant to write to you after our return but things have been incredibly hectic. We spent a week at the magical Villa in Tuscany. It was to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday and we were joined by family members who came from all over. The house ultimately housed all 22 of us very comfortably, including two rather elderly grandmothers!
Our stay at the Villa was everything we had hoped for. The Villa was everything it promised to be. It is quite magnificent and worked extremely well for so many of us. At the same time, we all had our own private suites and so were able to relax in some privacy too.
The host Christina made a superb supper for all of us on our first evening there and for the rest we enjoyed making our purchases at the little local supermarket and cooking for ourselves.
The Villa is also very conveniently situated so that we could make some day visits to Florence and Sienna as well as some other smaller towns and cities.
Christina's daughter also very kindly took our teenagers out one evening to a local establishment and they really enjoyed their evening.
The house is beautifully furnished and the bathrooms are superb. The children enjoyed the swimming pool even though it was not terribly warm yet.
It was a very memorable holiday and I have to thank you for the Villa which was everything that you said it would be.
We also had a very authentic experience on Easter Sunday when we attended the local church for Easter Sunday mass - this was definitely one of the highlights!
Thank You and best wishes
T.

Perfect villa for lg. group, we were 13 adults & 7 kids, ages 81-11. There's an elevator for the elderly and 2 staircases. Lg. dining table, great kitchen with commercial dishwasher that does dishes in 4 minutes. Lg. outdoor table/chairs under the covered arbor, beautiful swimming pool and gardens. Great views from the rooftop terrace of the olive groves and village of Cavriglia. The 12 bedrooms were comfortable with views from every window. Plenty of bathrooms, no waiting and no problem with hot water. Great spaces to be together or alone. There is Wi-Fi and a few husbands managed to do work on their laptops. We never needed the air conditioning, all the rooms have lg. windows and cross ventilation. The foyers on every floor have automatic light sensors and the outside also has lights that come on at night, was great not having to look for switches. The villa was better than described and everything we needed was provided. The owners are a wonderful family and made our stay a great experience. We asked them to prepare 4 dinners for us, they were delicious, ate at Piccolo's in the village a few times, & Notorius Cafe for gelato.

There's a train station in Montevarchi, about 8 miles, took 35 min. to Florence by train. A small Coop in in the village but a lg. Coop is in Montevarchi, they take Visa. We did day trips to Lucca, Pisa, Viariaggio, Sienna, Radda, Gaiole and Castellina and Florence.

We loved hearing the church bells, a few times a week a band would play in the village was fun hearing Beatles songs in Italian, even became accustomed to the rooster and peacocks from monastary on hillltop. If you're a very light sleeper, bring earplugs or leave windows closed. I actually miss hearing the nightly sounds of nature and loved leaving the windows open at night.

We all had a great time, would love to go back and definately recommend this villa. It was a perfect set-up for us as a family but I could also see this for a group of friends. We had no complaints or problems, what could be better. Most of my family had not been to Italy and they all said this was everything they imagined Tuscany would be, a few of the kids said they would love to bring their future kids back to visit.

I'm so glad I found Sabrina, she was a pleasure to work with and I can't say enough about the villa or its owners.