Anway, while searching for rooms, Mark happened on Camp Firenze. Essentially it's a campground with slots for campers. (Interesting to see how different it was from American campgrounds. But they also had what they called chalets - very much like a cabin or cabana.
Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchenette and a front porch. All the comforts of home and only 3 miles from the city center. A store and a restaurant on site, as well as laundry facilities, pool, and a shuttle into the city center. There was also a running/walking trail along the banks of the Arno and other restaurants in easy walking distance.
The photos on Hotels.com made the rooms look fairly spacious.
The truth is you couldn't swing a cat in there without getting hair in your teeth. I'm not sure how they managed these shots but these make it look bigger than it is. But it was big enough for us. We used the spare room with the bunk beds to store our luggage and we had one bathroom for showers and I had one for putting on makeup. I'm not sure we had a window behind the settee but if we did, it would have opened up to the back of the unit behind ours.
For us, it was perfect. We're just not that into night life these days so there was no need to be right in the center of the city. I also prefer to eat breakfast in. Otherwise it can be a fairly expensive meal. (I hate paying $5 or more for a slice of toast!)
My understanding is that it is fairly new, perhaps less than a year old. And if that's the case, you should go now because these units are going to have a short shelf life. The card keys have already been replaced with old-fashioned keys. There was a small tear in the kitchen flooring. The toilet in one of our bathrooms was leaking and the cabinet doors were not in the right position.
On Hotels.com, it said there was daily housekeeping. I can only assume that their idea of housekeeping is not the same as mine. My idea of housekeeping is that someone comes around to make the beds, refresh the towels and empty the trash. I had my doubts when we had to make up the bed in the first place. The only "housekeeping" that happened is the trash bin outside the unit was emptied daily. No one made beds or refreshed the towels. But that was fine. I can either make my own bed or live with the consequences and I didn't have to worry about staff coming in and rifling through our stuff while we were out.
There were also some other amenities that you expect in hotel rooms, like hair dryers, that were not there. The Chinese family in the unit next door sent their English-speaking teenager over to see if we had one. (We did not - but I often let my hair air dry and didn't care.)
The food in the restaurant was good. Better than the off-site places and less expensive. And the staff were all conversant in English, which was good for us because we're not really conversant in Italian.
We also enjoyed being able to sit outside. The porch/patio area was very private.
And best of all, there were some really fabulous sunsets.
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