Our stay in Italy was awesome. Team Tri State Inspirato was great! Special thanks to Katie Cotter.
We spent our first night in Rome at the St. Regis so we could get over our jet lag. We arrived very early about 8 AM and I really did not expect to get into our room. I did ask for an early check in but it was so early and check in is normally not until 3PM, but to my surprise our rooms were ready! AWESOME!
We really loved the St. Regis. We stayed their for two nights on the tail end too. They surprised us again by upgrading our rooms! The hotel and the service are magnificent. They have a very good breakfast. It is in a good location and they have a great concierge team. The spa treatments are excellent! I highly recommend this hotel. Also, while there go to Osterio 44 for dinner. It is a 5 minute walk from the hotel and absolutely fantastic! We enjoyed our coliseum and forum tour, but an FYI don't this in the summer—wow was it hot!
Our next stop was Ravello. It is just fabulous! The Piazza in the center of town is really nice and there are dozens of restaurants to choose from plus lots of fun shops.
While there you should absolutely go to the Mozzarella Making class. Biaggio and Carolina are wonderful. We enjoyed their stories and hearing about the art of making cheese as much as we enjoyed making the cheese. Go hungry because you get a very generous tasting of the various cheese they offer at the end of the class. And of course they give you wine as well.
We also went on the Olive Oil Tasting tour. Margarita and Vincenzo are so nice.Margarita's family has a beautiful garden/farm. She is very knowledgeable on olive oil making. Going through her land is like entering a secret garden of goodies with lemons, kiwis, rosemary, lavender, zucchini, olives— and so much more. We tasted the different olive oils and learned the differences between the regions. Then we had a wonderful light lunch under the lemon grove. Each course had a different olive oil and balsamic vinegar for us to try.
We also went on a boat excursion for the day. We stopped at Positano for shopping, then had lunch at a restaurant right on a cliff, and of course we visited the blue grotto in Capri. We also got to fish and swim in a private area. This is well worth doing. It was 8 hours of pure fun!
If you can squeeze it in, spend a day at the Palazzo Avino beach club. It is gorgeous and private. The restaurant there is very good as well. We loved swimming there. It was one of our favorite days.
Let me tell you about the hotel. I wanted to love it but I can only like it. Palazzo Avino is beautiful and serene. The rooms are kind of small and the bathrooms are challenging. They are small and getting in out of the tub/shower was tough. There were limited outlets to charge phones/iPads etc. which was also a bit of a pain. I am told this hotel was an old palace that they restored hence why it may be restrictive.
Outside of Antonio, the concierge, and I think Manager, the rest of the staff were not memorable. They were courteous but they did not make an impression. Service was satisfactory but not outstanding. The biggest plus of this hotel is the view and the beach club. The spa was mediocre at best. Rosselliniis, was a dining experience, but while the food is good it is more gourmet and not representative of italian cooking from that area. It was a real disappointment to us. AND Heads up...it is very expensive! The bar staff was very good and we had excellent drinks. The other on premise restaurant was okay but service there was quite slow. Breakfast was fine, but again not outstanding.
As I mentioned, Antonio was really the home run of Palazzo Avino. He managed all our activities, suggested restaurants and was available to help us with anything we needed. So, because of Antonio, the view and the beach club I would come back to this hotel.
We had a great time in Italy and really enjoyed our vacation.