Hotel Peace — Hotel in Pontedera

My family and I stayed here on a recent trip and Pontedera served as our springboard to other locations in Italy. ||||If you're looking for a hotel with lots of amenities...this isn't the place. Breakfast is available, but consists of some baked goods, water, milk, juices and mainly pre-packaged breakfast cakes and biscotti. I think if you want coffee it will cost you extra. ||||If you need English-speaking staff...this isn't the place. Our French-speaking knowledge helped a little bit since it's Latin-based, so we got by.||||If you want a quiet night's sleep...this isn't the place. We heard cars passing by, people conversing in the street and a noisy dog or two. ||||If you travel with young children...the place is sufficient but I wouldn't recommend it. ||||With all that said, the location is convenient. The Pontedera Casciana-Terme train station is about a 400m walk from the hotel and you're a 15 min train ride to Pisa and a 45-60 min train ride to Florence. You can get to Rome, Milan, Naples, Venice, etc. from either of those two stations. The public square is a quick walk as well with some restaurants, bars, gelaterias, a pharmacy, etc. A Conad grocery store is about 200m away for drinks or snacks. We had a family room and there was a small fridge to store drinks. A parking garage is nearby, at a cost of 6 Euro a day.||||Aside from the language barrier, the staff was accommodating and our room was well-maintained during our stay. I also must admit we had a good-sized room, and no complaints about the beds. We were on the third floor and it did take a while for our A/C to cool the room down. ||||It all depends on your traveling situation. For me and my family, it was a place to sleep but not much else. Because I traveled with children, I can't fully recommend the place for families but for couples or single travelers it may...

The hotel was mostly very good, but all it takes is one bad experience to ruin the stay and get you into bureaucracy nightmare. ||||The hotel is nice and the staff was mostly friendly. Even though my Italian is as bad as most of their English, with a few smiles and my native language being latin-derived as well, we got along. ||||Until it was time to pay. I looked at the receipt, everything was in order except that my employer's tax-number did not appear in it (a requirement for reimbursement of my expenses). I requested it to be added but this was met with unduly resistance. After 30 minutes of trying to convince the person behind the counter to print a new receipt with the tax number anywhere on it (even in the name field would do) I gave up on the argument instead of risking missing my train/flight.||||At one point I stated to the guy "I have been in Spain, France, Germany, etc and not once was this a problem", to which I got the reply which ended it for me: "now you are in Italy!". Here I gave up. I have been in other hotels in Italy and this was not a problem there either.||||I have no clue what it means to be a 3 star hotel (the wikipedia page shines a little light), but I would expect less resistance on what to me seems a trivial matter of printing a new sheet of paper.||||Please note that had this not happened I would have nothing bad to say about the hotel so take that into consideration as well. Well.... maybe the mattress was...

My partner and I used this hotel for work as it was within driving distance to the various vineyards we had to go visit. ||||The pros:||||- Wi-fi available and works well||- Price is right||- Breakfast - cappuccino in the morning was a pleasant surprise even though it should be standard everywhere! Croissants when available (limited number and if you came late they were gone) were good and for the rest your typical italian breakfast. Enough to get you to lunch!||- Position - in close proximity to train station and restaurants||- Bar fridge||||The cons:||||- A/C was not great||- Staff (except for the lovely girl) were less than helpful. In fact you would have been lucky to find someone at reception when you needed them and when you did find them - your problem wasn't even fixed||- Compared to other 3 stars (i.e. Hotel Delta in Montevarchi) the room is a little dated and so is the bathroom. Nothing wrong with them but just in need of a little revamp. ||||In reality the biggest complaint is the service. As I read from another reader, all you need is one or two bad experiences - especially with customer service - and things just do not look good anymore. ||||For short stays or to use for a base to visit other towns/cities, this is not a bad choice because at the end of the day - the...