|
| 
| Author: Damien Simonis
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Category: Book
List Price: $25.99
Buy New: $15.63
You Save: $10.36 (40%)
New (46) Used (9) from $15.63
Avg. Customer Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 17255
Media: Paperback
Edition: 8th
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 926
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.5
ISBN: 1741043115
Dewey Decimal Number: 914
EAN: 9781741043112
ASIN: 1741043115
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW! *The MOST CURRENT EDITION!.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Don't rely on this country guide--buy the city guides instead! August 7, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
My friend bought this guide for our trip through Italy this summer. Our trip went through Venice, Florence and Rome, with side trips into Tuscany and Naples/Pompeii. This book contains information on so many different places that it does not provide much useful information on any one city. We felt so lost in Venice and Florence with the scant information provided in this book that we ended up buying the LP Rome City Guide when we got to Rome. You would be much better off buying individual city guides before you leave the US though because travel books are very expensive once you're in the city. I have used many LP books over the years for both domestic and international travel, but I would recommend city books from now on.
 a disappointment June 10, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I own about 20 Lonely Planet guides and am a real fan.
This is probably the most disappointing one to date.
The info seems to be all over the place, sometimes completely wrong or the opposite of what you would expect : A luxury complex in the book was a real dump in reality, a palace not worth while, was probably the best thing we saw on our 10 day trip.
Complete "must see" places are missing and others who LP claims to be "must see" were not that great, so overall the weakest LP guide I've read and used so far.
They should start this one from scratch
 excellent service May 3, 2007
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
wonderful speedy service from the bookseller. I am in New Zealand and I was getting a little apprehensive - I thought I would not get the book in time for our trip to Italy at the beginning of June but no it arrived here today and I am thrilled - thank you J K Books
Good for getting around & trivia, but not much else. April 18, 2007
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
We just returned from a 10-day trip to Italy, mostly in Florence, Rome, and Milan. We carried both Lonely Planet Italy and DK Travel's EyeWitness Italy. Even though I've been a Lonely Planet devotee for years, I was very disappointed with Lonely Planet Italy.
Good points:
- Lonely Planet is GREAT for getting around. It has fantastic details on how to get from place to place. Even though we were flying in and out of lesser-known airports, the information we needed was there. Also, the Lonely Planet info made it a breeze to plan day trips to some of the smaller cities.
- Great tips! I think this is the biggest saving grace of Lonely Planet Italy. There were some fantastic tips for beating the crowds. In addition to information about advance bookings for museums (both in and outside of Italy), there was some great advice for avoiding queues at other major sights. This was especially helpful travelling during the super-crowded Easter holiday!
- Interesting Trivia. The one area of content that I actually picked up the Lonely Planet book to read was the little boxes of trivia. Things like a short history of Michelangelo's disagreements with the Popes. Most of these are usually fun and interesting to read.
- Lots of things to do! There were lots more listings in the Lonely Planet book compared to our Eyewitness.
- Extensive Hotel and Restarant Listings. The hotel listings are fine if you don't have another way to research them, but with so many great travel sites with candid traveller reviews, this doesn't make so much of a difference anymore. The restaurant listings are still helpful.
- Listings with admission fees. Our other guide mentioned in their listings if there were admission fees at places, but they didn't give the amount. It was nice to check Lonely Planet and know just how much things would cost, since some of the museums are not cheap!
- Lots of websites. I do most of my travel planning online before I leave, so I appreciated having the URLs for everything from hotels to museums to transportation.
Bad points:
- Crazy Itineraries. One thing I've always liked about the Lonely Planet books is the suggested itineraries like "Rome in 5 days." In the Italy book, this was only provided for Rome, which was disappointing, but the itineraries themselves were insane! There's actually a 2-day itinerary that covers almost ALL of Rome, which would be great for a whirlwind tour. The problem is that the longer itineraries were simply to finish the 2-day whirlwind and then see some more obscure sights. It seems that a better option would be to spend more time at the places visited in the 2-day trip. For example, explore some of the great museums that are in some of the areas glossed over by the 2-day plan.
- Absolutely no ratings of listed attractions. The problem with listing so many things to do is that you have no idea which ones you should actually do! I've found this to be a general problem in the Lonely Planet series. In more than one case, we've gone to see something after reading an interesting description in our LP guide, only to find that it's actually pretty boring, and the ONLY interesting points were the ones mentioned in the book. Eyewitness had a "Star Sight" system to mark their highest suggestions, and we absolutely loved this.
- Not enough descriptions or explanations. For example, the Lonely Planet description of the Roman Forums is something like, "To the left was the Temple of So-and-So. Across from that are the remains of the columns that formed the Such-and-Such." Unfortunately, it never explains anything about Such-and-Such or So-and-So, or why they were important. So you really have no idea what you're actually seeing (except the name).
- Too hard to follow. I've accepted this for years, because Lonely Planet keeps the book costs down by printing mostly black and white text, but in some places, it's just too hard to describe where something is. It's too hard to walk through a city square and try to read the prose descriptions of what's around you, especially when it's decorated with a the small literary flourishes that adorned the descriptions in this guide.
Overall, I feel that I just wouldn't have gotten as much out of the trip with only the Lonely Planet book. It's great for the logistics of travelling, but once we'd reached our destination, it wasn't very helpful at all. I highly recommend the Eyewitness guide if you want to learn more about Italy while you're there: Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides)
 great book, but the cross-referencing... March 29, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Great book, great line of books, but here's L.P.'s great quirk: despite an almost too complicated web of cross-references, you can't easily go from an item on the map to the description of that item. That is, if you're standing on Via del Corso and see that you are near five restaurants, it becomes a Herculean effort of page turning to find each of those five restaurants in the text. This seems like a minor point, but it will leave your cursing in the streets of Naples.
A solution that I came to in my more intense and grimy days of backpacking in small groups through Europe was to have one person carry a (well researched) Lonely Planet and another carry a (user friendly) Let's Go. This usually left us with all our bases covered.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
