Bagni di Lucca holiday villa: Benabbio

Thank you so much for a wonderful holiday.Both Celia and Enzo are very approachable and couldn't do enough for us prior to and during our stay at Le Mura, from organising a birthday cake & transportation to doing the shopping, the couple really went above and beyond, not like you'd get from bog standard package deals. We were made to feel so welcome and we thoroughly enjoyed your beautiful home set in magical surroundings. The drivers who taxied us to and from the airport from the Ridolfi firm were also very good indeed, a very smooth journey! Thank you once again for your hospitality, patience and explemplary service. :0)

I went here with some girlfriends in October for a hen weekend. Despite our arriving late in the evening and mixing up the meeting place, Celia's husband couldn't have been more hospitable in coming to meet us and take us up the mountain to the villa.

We had asked Celia to provide us with some food and wine for the first night and were greeted with a selection of meats, cheese and wine from the village delicatessan. There was also the basics for Saturday breakfast.

The next day we made ourselves coffee and surveyed our weekend hideaway. The grounds are beautiful (complete with pool, nut trees and magical persimmon) the views wonderful and the villa itself clean, sympathetically restored and decorated. There are massively thick stone walls, seemingly endless bedrooms, a huge long table in the kitchen with open fire and a comfortable sitting room with log burning stove.

The only drawback was the cold. The weather was unseasonably cold and the villa freezing. Celia provided plenty of wood though so we had fun making fires, though the bedrooms were still freezing (we put the heating on the 1st night but it didn't make it much warmer and we were warned it was expensive to run so after the first night we relied on the fires.)

There's a pretty village a short walk up the mountain with a little delicatessan and a restaurant we didn't try. We opted to stay in instead on Saturday night and cook for ourselves having stocked up at the supermarket in nearby Bagni di Lucca. We had a great lunch here sitting outside in the sunshine sampling the array of seasonal mushroom dishes.

We all said we would like to return with friends in the warmer weather and stay for a week or two. We would definitely recommend and Celia and her husband couldn't have beenore accommodating.

Having arrived in the dark, we woke to unexpectedly magical views over the valley.

A group of our friends stayed at Le Mura in October for a relaxed hen/bachlorette weekend. It was amazing. The villa was beautiful and provided everything we needed to sleep, cook and live in the villa as if we had been there all our lives. The owners, Celia and her husband (whose name escapes me at the moment) were so accomodating and helpful. The grounds were amazing - olive groves, chestnuts all around us - they were perfect for us to roast on the kitchen fire - and the local 'villages' were gorgeous. I felt like I was walkingtrhough a WWII film the whole time - and in fact, the area is steeped in interesting history from that period.

The local restaurants were amazing too - the food - the wine - the table wine was so inexpensive and it tasted like necter from the Gods. That might be a bit over the top, but suffice it to say it was great.

We all had such a good time - we started talking about our next group trip out there long before we had finished this one. We will all be back - often!