165elspethh
Google
I stayed at Le Fonti a San Giorgio for five nights in late August with my husband, our 5 year old, and my parents. We had the "Tuscany Premium Apartment" with three bedrooms, which was lovely and spacious for our family. The best things about staying here were the amazing, gorgeous views and scenery from our windows, the terrace, the pools, and the restaurant, and the delicious nightly dinners at the on-site restaurant! The only thing that kept this from being a 5 star stay for us was an issue with AC in our apartment, but the management is hopefully addressing that, and overall we absolutely loved our stay and would gladly return!||The location and setting of the agriturismo are wonderful - it's quiet and peaceful and secluded on a hilltop at the end of small dirt road with amazing views of unspoiled vineyards and olive groves and hills in all directions. And at the same time, it's less than a hour from Florence, 30 min from San Gimignano and many wineries, and within 1-2 hours of sights like Siena, Pisa, Lucca (just add 10-15 min to all the travel times that your map program gives you to account for the twisty hill roads!). The 2km dirt road is a bit of an adventure (my husband described one section as "moguls") but it was perfectly passable in an average sedan rental car and so worth it for the location at the end! ||With respect to the apartment itself, we particularly liked the spacious rooms, the comfortable patio (have mosquito repellent for the evenings!), and the good-sized bathrooms attached to each bedroom (a small issue with a shower not draining well was fixed immediately after we let the front desk know). The beds were on the harder side, but not too uncomfortable for any of us. The kitchen was also very small and rather dark - this was for us as the dining table is out in the nice living room and we were really just using the kitchen for the fridge and some of the dishes and utensils on occasion for snacks or drinks, but it might not be ideal for a family that's hoping to cook regular meals. It's also worth noting that the windows do *not* have screens, so you need to rely on the AC units for cooling if you want to avoid getting bitten by mosquitos inside at night (management suggested using mosquito coils, but my daughter and husband get bitten badly and my experience is that coils are not very effective, so we did not do that).||The pools on this property are lovely and clean with loungers and umbrellas and great views over the countryside, and we enjoyed cooling off in them on several evenings. The pool up by the main restaurant and "inn" is particularly lovely and picturesque! It's supposed to be for guests staying in the inn rooms while the lower pool (which is a bit more plain) is supposed to be for guests staying in apartments, but neither pool was crowded during our stay and no one seemed to mind when we went up to the inn pool one evening.||The restaurant was one of the real highlights of our stay here! They serve an a la carte dinner with a changing daily menu of traditional dishes with a few options each for starters, primi piati (mostly pastas), secondi piati (mostly meat, fish, and some vegetable dishes) and desserts (the same three options daily), along with their own delicious and reasonably-priced wine by the glass or bottle. Weather-permitting, the tables are outside overlooking the vineyards or on a covered, open-air patio, which was particularly nice for us because my daughter could go run around and play away from the eating area when she got bored sitting at the table. The one challenge for us was that the earliest seating is 7:30 pm, a dinner with an appetizer and main course and dessert could easily take 1.5-2 hours, which was absolutely lovely for the adults but made for late evenings for the little one. Buffet breakfasts (8am-9:30am) are available daily at the restaurant, and were a nice mix of fresh fruits, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, granola/cereal, mini croissants, bread, meat, and homemade coffee cake. Not exceptional like the dinners, but a easy way to get a good and tasty meal before the day. I believe lunches are also offered at the restaurant, but we went out every day so never tried them.||Finally, the staff at the reception were lovely and welcoming and helpful (although it's worth noting that the desk does close at 6:30 pm). And the place had a nice mix of families with young and older children, and younger and older adult couples and friend groups. We felt very welcome with our daughter (they gladly made her plain pasta for dinner every night) and I think all types of travelers (other than maybe college students looking for somewhere lively) would feel right at home.||The one major negative to our stay was the air conditioning in the apartment. In the apartment we had, the units in two of the three bedrooms did not provide any cooling at all, while the ones in the third bedroom and living did not cool as strongly as mini-splits usually do and all four were very loud when operated at anything more than the lowest fan setting (like the volume of a very loud old window unit not a mini-split). The management was very responsive when we let them know about the units not cooling and quickly came to check it out and confirm that there wasn't a setting that needed to be adjusted differently, and, after seeing that there wasn't, indicated that they would be getting an HVAC technician out to take a look at the units (which understandably couldn't happen immediately). Fortunately we were able to keep the whole apartment tolerably cool by closing all the shutters during the day and keeping on the two semi-functioning units on at full blast during the day (and then turning down the fan speed at night to sleep). For guests who are considering booking the "Premium Apartment" in the near future it may be worth asking about the status of the AC, but I'm pretty confident they will address it promptly since the management seemed to be genuinely unaware of the issue before we raised it and seemed to be taking it seriously (the owner herself even came by to see what was going on). I'm less confident that they'll be able to get the units running quietly since I'm not sure that they really recognized that as atypical or if it's a fixable issue - but it would be much less of a problem if the units were able to provide enough cooling that they could run on a lower setting.
