Pensione

Not a pensione website, but airbnb.com is a website with less expensive rooms, sometimes apartments, and sometimes just individual rooms in homes. It has very good ratings, and you can even look it up on wikipedia

Are you looking for B&Bs? You can specify that in booking.com and venere.com, but know that in Italy, the line between a B&B and a small family-run hotel is very gray.

Thanks for the input! Much appreciated.

Meggan, lots of pensioni now refer to themselves as B&Bs, unless they are very well known as pensioni (a few in Venice come to mind). In most places, a hotel needs to have a minimum number of rooms (in Lucca it's six). Some large hotels include breakfast in their rates, some B&Bs give you a voucher for a nearby bar. You can find info on sites like booking.com along with reviews and photos - if there's a good breakfast, someone will mention it or there will be photos.

Agree that there is sometimes no difference between pensione, b&b, and some hotels. You can use booking.com to these by town. We search by town and date and then sort by price. For a big city you can add restrict your search to particular neighborhoods. Reviewing the customer comments helps eliminate some hotels and helps us get the best we can for the price we are willing to pay.