Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides) Reviews

Review by M. Natraj for Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides)
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I’ve been a long-time Lonely Planet fan, believing that text was fine. Why would I need pictures, since I was going to see the places in person anyway? I have since changed my mind completely!

We just returned from a 10-day trip to Italy (mostly Florence and Rome), and I have to say that I absolutely LOVED having this book along. When we went shopping for a guidebook, my husband picked this up and I went straight for the Lonely Planet. I resisted the Eyewitness guide, and we ended up splurging and just buying both. This ended up giving us an entire trip to compare them.

It’s true that it didn’t list a ton of places to see in each, but we didn’t really feel the book was too lacking. If we had known our itinerary when we went book shopping, we probably would have picked up Florence/Tuscany and Rome instead of the complete Italy, but this did help us choose our final destinations. One thing we really liked in the listings was the “Star Sight” marks. With the Lonely Planet books, the hardest part is trying to pick out which of the sights are really worth seeing and which are only so-so. In the Eyewitness book, not only did we have the Stars to guide us, but we also had the pictures to give us an idea if something was going to match our tastes or not.

By far, the best thing about this book was the information about the sights. I got so much more out of the trip by learning about the places we visited while we were there. From the food to the architecture to the history, it was so much more interesting. The clinching comparison between our two guides was the Roman Forum. The Eyewitness book had a sketch showing the layout of the forum with variou areas labelled with a brief description. A more detailed explanation of the various sites appeared on the following page. In contrast, our Lonely Planet tried despearately to explain the locations in prose (“to your left upon entering from this street…” and “across from that stands the remains of…”), and in the end, the only description they gave of each structure/area was its name! I really enjoyed having some background on what the places were and why they were significant.

The only downside of the book is in planning the logistics. There’s not a lot of information on how to get from city to city (or airport to city), and the admission prices to museums and attractions are surprisingly absent. However, with the blossoming of online travel sites, a lot of this information is easily available from other sources.

The city maps were a little confusing when crossing from one map to the next (I don’t think there’s any overlap), but I appreciated having the sights labelled even when they weren’t described in the listings. As we walked past a large church or government building, it was nice to be able to see what it was. The color coding of points of interest was good for walking, since we could tailor our route to pass by more interesting spots.

We didn’t use the hotel listings, since I researched our hotels online, but we did take advantage of a few restaurant suggestions. There aren’t a lot of budget listings, but the ones we tried were fantastic! Off the beaten path, we never would have found them otherwise, and we appreciated having budget sit-down options. The budget listings in our other guide tended to list lunch spots and self-service eateries.

In general, I really think this book helped “make” our trip. The whole time, it was like having a guide with us, pointing things out and explaining what was going on.

Review by BellaBull for Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides)
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Overall this book fell a bit short of my expectations.

The pictures are nice because it puts a face to the description, but even for a book covering an entire country it felt a little anemic.

Even large cities like Roma, Florence, etc. covered only major items, not even a few unique/unusual suggestions.

This book is alright as a decent start and it’s certainly visually appealing but I find other books to be more thorough & useful. Forget the pictures and just get a better book (Frommers, Lets Go, Cadogan, & Unofficial Guides are all solid) and add in a little internet research to see what the lesser known areas look like.

Review by Pikmin for Frommer’s Italy 2010 (Frommer’s Color Complete Guides)
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In the past I’ve generally relied on the Rough Guide or Let’s Go books for travel advice, holding the opinion that books like Frommer’s were geared more towards older travelers who followed a fixed and possibly boring itinerary. But I’m hoping to return to Italy this year for the first time in 7 years, and am looking forward to seeing how it’s changed, so when I got the chance to check out this book, I was eager to pick it up and start some armchair planning.

Having spent some time with it, I think this book would work really well for either the armchair traveler or anyone planning a trip to Italy in the near future, as it’s really just packed full of useful information for travelers of any budget or style, while at the same time teasing you with beautiful photographs and descriptions. I like the layout in particular, for finding just what you need when you need it: each section starts with a brief and slightly poetic introduction (“Venice is a preposterous monument to both the folly and obstinacy of humankind. It shouldn’t exist, but it does”) , immediately followed by the “Essentials” section, giving you all the necessary logistics of arrival (key phone numbers, public transit, etc). The “Neighborhoods in Brief” is a fantastic way of getting a handle on the different areas of the cities that’s useful in figuring out where you really want to stay (ie., do you want to stay in the funky neighborhood with excellent shopping and local restaurants, or the upscale area near the museums?).

A quick way for me to judge an Italy guidebook is to flip to the section on Venice, a city I adore. This books gets a thumbs-up from me on this section. An accurate assessment of the indecipherable address system (“A maniac must’ve numbered Venice’s buildings”) is accompanied by some good tips on actually finding a specific address. It also accurately assess the romance (or lack thereof) in most gondola rides.

One of the things I liked best about the book was the color photographs – you don’t usually get those in a travel book, at least not this many and of this quality. Since half the pleasure of the travel guide is savoring the planning and anticipation, it succeeds on that level. There’s also a pretty handy pull-out map of Italy at the back of the book with street maps of Venice and Rome on the flip side. These things do make the book heavy, but you can always do what I’ve done, which is cut out the section you’re currently touring, and just take those pages with you when you go out for the day.

Review by N. Hawkins for Frommer’s Italy 2010 (Frommer’s Color Complete Guides)
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I like big tomes of books with travel information, and I’ll get to field test this book in several weeks during a crazy trip around Italy. This book’s a monster, and very comprehensive. And I’m not a big fan of Frommer’s in general, but I rather like this book. The book itself is easy to read unlike the Rough Guide books. The color photos were nice, but were bonuses and not really helpful to the content.

The book’s layout was helpful because it’s geographically based, so if you wanted to hit specific areas, attractions and lodging are logically based. The hotel and food sections were extremely helpful in trying to decide where to treat myself when I’m in Italy.

If you’re looking for a good book on Italy, this is a great book to start with, but I’d never rely on just one book as a source of information. Consider this one of the good ones out there, and review them all.

Review by Steph for Frommer’s Italy 2010 (Frommer’s Color Complete Guides)
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I loved Frommer’s Italy 2010. Not only is a surprisingly thick and heavy (almost 2 lbs for a smaller sized paperback) but it packs so much inside. Plus it has a fold out map that includes the bigger cites such as Venice and Rome to orient yourself as you explore the cities. But what I really liked were the color photos! There aren’t a lot of them but they are certainly more exciting than the grainy black and whites ones I had in other travel guides. Plus I have to agree with much of what the Frommer’s guide states.

I’ve been to Italy and I would definitely agree on the spots the guide book recommended as spots that are must see first. (There are museums such as the one that houses Michelangelo’s David which really is only interesting because it has David.) If the rating is 3 stars I would definitely recommend visiting it. I think when they grade it 2 stars they mean that there are a couple of things of note but the rest…so-so. The only thing I didn’t agree on in Rome is that the Coliseum is a must see but I think it is kinda a rip off to pay to see inside. (You can pretty much see all the ruins from the outside.) And if you can and are a lover of gardens and fountains the Villa d’Este is well worth the extra travel to check out so I think it should be 3 stars, but I am a garden buff.

The problem with Italy is there is so much to see you can actually get tired of going to museums and seeing masterpieces so pace yourself. Then if you have the extra time and energy consider trying the lesser starred attractions. So attractions are something this book excels at. As to the lodging I am not really sure since most of the time I was never there long and can’t even remember the names of the places I stayed at. And the food was pretty much universally good. Most of the time we ate stuff we bought on the way and picnicked with since we were on the go so much.

Overall, I am pretty excited to take this book with me on my next trip and confident that it will prove invaluable on the cities that I haven’t been to. The only thing is that it is heavy and carrying it around could really be a pain. If you plan on only going to 1 or 2 cities it might be better to photocopy those pages and take the included map with you instead.