Rick Steves Italy Planning Map: Including Rome, Florence, Venice & Siena City Maps
CDN$ 1.97
Not much Italy in ",Italy", - I find that Rick Steves ",back door", philosophy and his general tips are sound, so I bought Italy 2006. The book is promoted as a guidebook to the whole country.Surprise! It only covers selected tourist centers, and concentrates on the big cities. Most of the towns of southern Italy aren t mentioned. Sicily is not even in the index!
strange biases - While many people hail Rick Steves as a guru of european travel,we were disappointed by two of his books on a recent trip toProvence and to Tuscany, and soon learned to distrust his recommendations. Some examples: - he strongly recommended against driving into Pisa, saying it was a nightmare. In fact, we drove off the Fi-Pi-Li freeway, parked across the street from the town for 2.50 euro, snapped some fun photos, and drove off. Easily one of the most efficient parts of the trip, and surprisingly fun to see. - he didn t say great things about Carrara-- again, a highlight of the trip to see marble mountains, visit a live quarry and tour inside a mountain, surrounded by giant rooms of marble. The souvenirs were some of the best we took back, including a sculptural interpretation of the Bodicelli s Birth of Venus, which two sculptor-friends lauded as being a quite impressive little piece. (obviously mass-produced from marble-dust, not hand-carved) - he panned the hilltown of Bonnieux, Provence as having little to see there-- we adored it as one of the highlights of the trip, wishing we arrived early enough to enjoy more of the shopping. FYI it maybe expensive for your taste, but it was beautiful and relaxing. - he spends little or no effort on shopping, and too much time on restaurant and hotel reviews. My fiancee loves clothes shopping, and I love food shopping -- he covered little of either. Meanwhile, we didn t care about hotels since we were renting a villa (italy) and a exchanging our home (france). - IMHO he spends too much time (pages) fussing over details of specific hotels and restaurants, rather than covering more of them in a simple list of ones to try and ones to avoid, perhaps with a few words only. As a result, he covers a tiny percentage of what s available, choosing what to cover at random, often missing real gems. The best meal we ate in Provence wasn t listed in his guide. - the Provence restaurant and hotel scene seems to be changing quickly in response to Parisian tourists but a glut of rooms. I m skeptical that the reviews are up-to-date in his (or any) travel guide.This is in stark contrast to great travel books like LonelyPlanet s guide to India, which proved unbelievably valuablein finding out-of-the-way places and avoiding problems whenI went in 1996.As with any travel guide, it pays to browse online first(use amazon to read some sample pages)-- there are differentones for different types of travelers-- from cheapskate travelto luxury, student to drive-by tourist. This review is writtenby someone who prefers to do less and see more, spending a weekin one place and avoid the big, touristy spots (hence the shockof Pisa).Finally, we also brought Frommer s, which wasn t much better,nevermind the Amazon five-star rating.
Best guidebook to Italy. - Humerous, helpful, terrific guide book. Would only travel with Steves!
extremely helpful guide - we spent over 3 weeks in Italy - starting from South to North. i brought both the Lonely Planet and Rick Steves books and found Steves book the most helpful. the best parts were advice on how to avoid waiting in long lines (ie Coliseum) and restaurants recommendations. hotels were accurately depicted and very close to major sites. the only shortcoming was that there was no warning about exchanging money at the train stations. apparently, some places charge up to 18% commission so beware and read all the fine print.
the Rick Steves phenomenon is over - Rick s books started out quirky and interesting and different from the rest of the field because they had a distinct personality. Now Steves has become a brand name like the rest. The books are still written in a friendly tone, but I found, traveling with this book through Tuscany, that the descriptions often bore little relation to the actual places described. Maybe Rick is a victim of his own success, but places he (and his team of writers) describe as charming and out of the way were as often as not anything but. Felt more like Italian Disneyland. The restaurants were especially disappointing. I love my fellow countrymen, but I didn t go to Italy to hang out with a bunch of American tourists.