I can highly recommend the Hotel Fortyseven in Rome. It has an excellent location, right in the back of the Forum. The bus 170 from the Termini took us right to the Hotel, and Bus 82 took us into the heart of Rome, Plaza Navona, and the Vatican. Upon arrival, we had a bottle of champagne waiting in our room along with a nice package of 3 different bars of chocolate, 70, 75 and 85% of pure cacao. Quite a nice treat.

The hotel is quite modern and the rooms are lovely. We had a lovely view of the Church of Saint Valentine and the two Roman temples near the Circus Maximo. Breakfast was excellent. The concierge was quite helpful in steering us into the right direction for siteseeing but was also quite willing to confirm dinner reservations or give suggestions where to eat.

We combined our free drink the last evening of our stay with our free dinner. Unfortunately, the roof top terrace was still closed (opens generally around 1st of April weather permitting) but we were able to order anything we wanted from the bar. We opted for champagn, and the hotel did not hesitate to open a bottle of Roederer French champagne for us. Dinner was served in the intimate room next to the garden terrace and the food was nicely prepared and quite tasty and came with a bottle of Chianti Reserve (2 bottles for the 4 of us).

There was only one little glitch. Our room was not issued any bathrobes. Since I love to use the sauna, or hammam, I went downstairs to ask for a bathrobe. The concierge had left for the day, so I asked at the receptionist. The gentleman at the reception said that we were in a "standard room" and no bathrobes were supplied. I told them, wait a minute, we are here with "Luxury Link", our friends on the same package have bath robes in their rooms and Luxury Link says we can use the Steam Room and Gym facilities, therefore, we should get bathrobes. The answer was "sorry".... He suggested, I wear my bathing suite and wrap a towle around me. I did as I was told. Unfortuntely, since I did not know where the steam room was located I had to come back down to the reception in my makeshift outfit to ask to be shown to the steamroom. I felt rather uncomfortable parading around the other guests at the reception before being shown the stairways down to the gym and steamroom. The problem was corrected the next day when I talked to the concierge, but helas, that day, the steam room failed to heat up and I wasted an hour of my time hopeing it would heat up properly...

All told, I can highly recommend Hotel Fortyseven for a 4-day stay in Rome. It is a lovely hotel, quite close to all the attractions, offers excellent breakfast and a nice dinner, and best of all, the price is right.... $999 for 4 nights. Not bad. If it is still availabe at that rate, we'lI be back next year.