I'll post info on our hotel and schedule in the Italy thread and will greatly appreciate all recommendations. Florence seems to be the favorite place for a majority of people we know.

As far as lounges are concerned, we use them for a few reasons:
I have lifetime memberships in the DL and AA/US Clubs, and PP through AMEX Platinum. My wife has AA/US Lifetime, DL Reserve and PP through her AMEX Platinum. There's no annual cost to us for lounge access.

The gate areas at LGA are overcrowded and miserable and that's where most of our flights originate. Whether we're going to LGA from our NJ or Long Island home, we need to leave sufficient time to deal with traffic so we usually have an extra hour or so at the airport. Neither of us eat the club junk food (or is it junky club food) nor do we drink the liquor. We're coffee, tea, and water drinkers. If our flight is at meal time and we haven't been upgraded (we're about 75% this year) we'll bring food on-board.

We also fly NRSA and the clubs are a good place to hang out when we're not waiting quietly at the gate.

We don't have any great expectations of what the clubs offer so we're never disappointed by what we encounter.