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| Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides) | 
 enlarge | Author: Dk Publishing
Publisher: DK Travel
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
Buy New: $13.99
You Save: $16.01 (53%)
Buy New/Used from $12.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  (32 reviews)
Sales Rank: 7430
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Turtleback
Edition: 2006
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 720
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0756615453
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.50493
EAN: 9780756615451
ASIN: 0756615453
Publication Date: March 20, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 THE BEST GUIDE EVER! May 14, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have orderd several travel guides and this is the BEST! "DK Eyewitness Travel" guides are always amazing. It has everything I was looking for with maps, colorful photos, great historical lessons, bus and tram routes, color coded sections, shopping suggestions, survival guide, and much more. MOST TRAVEL GUIDES ONLY HAVE SMALL BORING WRITING PIECES.... this one was amazing with details that were interesting and visual effects that made me want to visit each part of Italy!
Great start for your itinerary planning. May 13, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I always buy the Eyewitness Travel Guides for planning my trips. They are a great and user friendly source of information.
I resisted, but this guide won me over! April 18, 2007
45 out of 45 found this review helpful
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.
Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides) February 3, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Excellent read, couldn't put it down. Now we can not wait to go!!
The best out there! Eyewitness makes my job easier! February 2, 2007
I cannot remember how many times I have recommended this book, not only my clients, but to my Italian course students, as well as people traveling to Italy in general. I have written numerous reviews about this book on Amazon and will continue to do so. I have given this book as a gift to many clients who have traveled to Italy with me. It has great travel advice, wonderful pictures, and good historical and cultural notes for each region of the 'boot'. It is very accurate and tells people the main things they should know about each area.
It's a great book for those completely lost about planning a trip, especially their first trip. If you've been wanting to go to Italy, but aren't sure about where, this book will help you out. It's quite heavy, so I would not recommend traveling with it.
Other good books are Rick Steves' Rick Steves' Italy 2009 (Rick Steves)and Italy for Dummies Italy For Dummies (Dummies Travel), they both have good advice on traveling to Italy. You can also visit my website for some travel tips.
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