Customer Reviews

Globe Trekker: Rome

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

In this DVD, the some major highlights of Rome are visited including the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, St. Peter's, an art museum, a church, and the Pantheon and the Forum. I was surprised at the beauty of the interior of the Santa Maria church in Trastavere.

The sites are broken down by "days" of a sample trip itinerary, e.g. Day 1: The Forum, Day 2: Piazza Campiodoglio, etc. Unfortunately, on one of the days, the host of the show goes to show us Tuscany, a few hours away from Rome by train. In a travel guide about Rome, I would have preferred they showed some other Roman site rather than something outside the city.

Another irritating part of the DVD was the host, a cheeky young woman with a British accent which was annoying at times and I had difficulty understanding a few words she said. While I wouldn't go so far as to call her Eurotrash, she was pushing the limits of taste when she dressed up in a nun's habit, walked outside and asked a passerby "How do I look?". She also starts one morning by taste-testing a bunch of coffee and spikes one cup with some booze. Real nice.

This DVD has some nice clips of what Roman tourist sites look like, but if you're over 35, you might not like the host that much.

In this episode from the Travel Channel's TV series, "Globe Trekker", our charming host Estelle Bingham guides us to all the top tourist attractions in Rome: the Vatican, the Colosseum, the Trastevere, the Piazza Campidoglio, etc. That's all well and good, but unlike Travel Channel's other longrunning series "Great Hotels" and "Passport with Samantha Brown", this show provides us with no information whatsoever on where to stay while we're in Rome. No recommendations on the best hotels, the best restaurants. Scarce travel information on getting around "town". We're not even told when Rome's peak and low tourist seasons are.

That being said, this is a decent introduction to the historic sites of Rome, but if you're actually planning a trip to Rome someday, you'll need a lot more than this to go by.

To be on TV they should either have a great personality or an attractive appearance. This woman had neither.

The woman dressed as a nun and asked "do I look cute" on the street. She spoke in English to perplexed Italians. tried to be cute by making faces. At some part she started talking about some "Fellini" person and deliberately turned the video black and white for a few minutes, she mispronounced Italian horribly, there was absolutley no humor.

As for traveling information, this is worthless. she actually says "it was only $4 to get to (some city)", but doesn't mention which form of transportation she used!

They show short 3 second clips of tourists giving their impressions of Rome, tourist: "it's just amazing", next tourist: "it's breathtaking", next tourist: "just think of all the people that died building this", next tourist: "just beautiful". Come on! The DVD is only 60 minutes and they spend it like this. I could have read that on a traveling brochure.

As an alternative I recommend Globe Trekker: Italy, with Justine Shapiro.

I'm a long time fan of the Globe trekker series so i'm surprised they actually sell this DVD.

It honestly was very irritating to watch.

While I didn't DISLIKE this video, I really didn't find it helpful at all. It was more a video on "what did I do in Rome" versus "what YOU can do in Rome". I'd suggest getting a solid travel guide (DK Eyewitness makes really great ones) and a more in-depth DVD about Rome itself. "Engineering an Empire: Rome" was a little dry, but VERY informative; and it was really neat seeing the history of all the Roman landmarks, not just the coliseum.
If you're going to buy it, don't spend more than five dollars. It's not worth more than that.

This is a sort of an Hip-Hop styled guide to Rome. The host Estelle Bingham is a nice young girl, she is flirting with the guys, showing off her nice body and dressing up in nun clothes. This is nice and cute. The problem is you don't see much Rome. The scenes are changing so fast, the comments are so brief and the camera is typically focused on the girl. It all looks like an MTV video clip, hyper energized but not very informative.

In my view is a quite typical travel guide for the eurotrash tourist, pulls all the stops for parties, multicutural experiences, BIASED view of the city and of the Italians (mafia...), politically correct blabber, and little or no geology, science, history of the city. EUROTRASH tourist guide for poor Europeans that think they are rich enough to pick others problems. Maybe the need to belong too???