We stayed at Villa Luciana for 3 weeks in June 2015 and thoroughly enjoyed our stay. Villa Luciana…read moreis a 3-bedroom apartment four short blocks from the beach. It's spacious and the gardens are beautiful. The cost runs around 45 euro a night for a stay of two weeks or longer, so it's cheaper than most of the hotel rooms and far more spacious, especially for our family of four.
This place is not listed on most of the English-language vacation rental sites as it appears that the family that owns it markets it mainly to Italian customers. But the guy who manages the place, who goes by the single name Franco, speaks English well and made us feel very comfortable. We can highly recommend Villa Luciana to English-speaking tourists.
We ended up here by chance. We had booked a reservation at Casa Di Franco, an apartment building converted to vacation rentals, which was owned by the same family. The Casa Di Franco was sold just a couple of weeks before our arrival, and Franco contacted us to let us know, saying that he had arranged for an even nicer place at no extra cost. He met us there upon our arrival, made sure everything was okay, and gave us his cell number to reach him if we had any problems. The honest and open way that he handled the change of our accommodations convinced us that he's a person we wanted to do business with, and we were very pleased with the place he found for us.
The family apparently owns or markets several vacation rentals in the Abruzzo via the www.latuacasainabruzzo.it website. I can't comment on the places they have in the other towns, but Villa Luciana was just great. The pictures on the website really don't do it full justice. When we drove up, our reaction was: "Wow, it's beautiful".
The building has two rental units, one of the ground floor and one upstairs. We stayed in the ground floor unit. The overall size of the apartment was about 1000 square feet, considerably more than you get in a hotel for the same price. The unit has a good sized kitchen with a gas range and a toaster oven. It's well stocked with dishes, glasses, pots and pans, and there's a market about two blocks away along Via Arno. We had breakfast at the apartment and went out for lunch and dinner, but if someone were to prefer to cook and eat in, this place is well set up for it. There's a four-seat table right in the kitchen.
The rest of the apartment consists of three bedrooms. One has a queen size bed and the other two have singles. All three bedrooms are spacious, and there are two well-equipped bathrooms. There's a small laundry room accessed from the outside that has a washing machine only. We did our own laundry there and hung stuff on the line to dry, but if that is too primitive for you, there's a laundromat on the corner of Via Arno and Via Toscana.
Our children, age 18 and 14, really enjoyed the place. They loved being able to run over to public beach in five minutes, come back to the apartment when they wanted to, and then head back for the beach. In early June, the water of the Adriatic was suprisingly warm, and we enjoyed swimming in the salty sea along with other beach activities. Garden Lido just over the line in Tortoreto Lido was very close, and we enjoyed the wonderful restaurants of Alba, especially Carlo V, the Gaugin Pub, the Pizzeria del Pescatore, the Friggitoria for takeout, and Istanbul Kebab for delicious middle eastern food.
The area where Villa Luciana is located felt very safe, and the kids went out on their own, found their own gelateria, pasticceria and places to eat, and in general had a great time enjoying the run of the place. Alba was a wonderful place to use as a base for our three weeks in Italy, and we had a chance to see Civitella, Teramo, the Salinello Gorge, L'Aquila, Vasto, Florence, Sienna, Arezzo and Rome.
The people we met in Abruzzo were wonderful. I'd heard from some American tourists that Italians were unpleasant to tourists, and maybe that's true in some of the big cities, but that certainly wasn't the case in Abruzzo. Everyone was gracious, many spoke English, and those who didn't were patient with our slow and limited Italian.
