Customer Reviews

Italy For Dummies

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am not a big fan of dummies books but I am acting as my own travel agent for our families 2nd trip to Italy. I was in the middle of planning and lost this book so I am reordering. This book is so full of useful information on how to save money, where to eat, museum information. I pack very light but this is the one book we are planning on hauling with us.

I am so happy that I had this book with me when I went abroad. My parents had been given a different tour book, but it was retired during the trip. Italy for Dummies was so simple to use. The maps were accurate and the hotel information priceless. Even if you've been before, this book is a godsend in a pinch. It helped me make great choices during a hectic time in Italy-"Holy Week" A must for any traveller.

We used "Italy for Dummies" for our recent trip to Italy. We had never been to Italy before and we were planning on touring without a group through Venice, Rome, Milan and Florence. "Italy for Dummies" gave us great ideas on what to see in limited periods of time.

This book gave us hints on the best tours, how to see each city in whatever amount of time we had alloted and what not to miss.

We did their recommended tours in most of the cities.

When we left our hotel room we would tear out the section pertintent to the city we were in and carry it with us all day consulting it as needed.

If you're planning on touring Italy on your own this book is a must! from the important train information to where to pick up a local tour it was invaluable!

ITALY FOR DUMMIES is so helpful. It's arranged so you can easily find famous sites, art, night spots, restaurants, discos and pubs, shopping, as well as practical how-to-get-where information for all the major tourist destinations and maps of many of the major cities. There are even sections to help you negotiate an upscale Italian menu as well as a pizza menu, which, believe me, is very useful to those of us who don't speak Italian. The excellent sidebar on Italian ice cream (which is probably the best ice cream in the world) recommends some of the most popular flavors, including my favorites bacio (hazelnut chocolate) and stracciatella (chocolate chip)! Try a dip of two or three flavors on your cone-that's the Italian way. Believe me, you'll walk it off. The book even tells you how to toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain Italian style. I highly recommend ITALY FOR DUMMIES, whether you are a first time traveler to Italy, or you've been there a half dozen times as I have. The book is great at telling you where all the great art is (some of the major works at each museum), how to get tickets and how long the lines will probably be. The book's weakness is that it doesn't help you understand the art--it's 5-word to 1-sentence descriptions of paintings and sculptures don't really do the job. It would be great if they offered a book called Italian Art for Dummies. They don't, so I got the next best thing, ART HISTORY FOR DUMMIES. I highly recommend the chapter on Ancient Rome, which is great for helping you understand the whole span of Roman art, architecture and history (and really fun and interesting to read!) and of course the Early and High Renaissance chapter, which is magnificent, the Mannerism chapter (which tells about one of the truly great off the beaten-path art sites, Palazzo Te in Mantova, aka Mantua, which isn't mentioned at all in Italy for Dummies), the Italian Baroque, and the really lively section on the Italian Futurists (who were around during the early 20th century). I packed both ART HISTORY FOR DUMMIES and ITALY FOR DUMMIES in my suitcase when I went to Venice, Florence, Rome and Mantua for ten days over the Christmas Holidays. Both of these books made my trip so much richer and more interesting than my previous five Italian adventures. I never saw so much of Italy in so short a time--I don't mean in terms of quantity but quality. These books help you to get inside the Italian experience much more deeply.

What I liked...super concise review of Italian history, nice "top 10" lists at the end; good basic information.

What I didn't like...this particular book was kind of a disappointment in comparison to other "Dummies" travel books I have used. I found the London and Paris "Dummies" books absolutely invaluable. Perhaps because this book covers an entire country, rather than an individual city, did I find it to be much too general. I also found the English/Italian dictionary at the end to be really lacking. I did not expect it to be by any means extensive; however, the 2-page listing in a "Time Out" guide that I bought was much more meaningful in the choice of helpful words.

Perhaps it is because I have done a bit more traveling, much of the basic information just seemed to be that...much too basic. What might be nice is if the "Dummies" series had just a book on "travel tips for Dummies," and then omitted a lot of that very basic content from these location guides. It would allow room to make the location guide much more comprehensive and meaningful.

If this is your first trip to Europe, then by all means, this is a great book. But if you have been to Europe before and are comfortable with your basic travel know-how, you might want to look elsewhere.

This book is great for planning, because it's packed with useful information so you know what to expect, especially if this is your first trip to Italy. I'm used to giving travel planning seminars on Italy all the time, and this book is a staple!! I like to recommend it to students who are going on an exchange program, as well as adults going on a family trip. I wouldn't say it's something you want to actually take with you on your trip, because it's big and a bit heavy. You don't want to compromise valuable suitcase space, when you know Italy is known for shopping!!!

I thought this book was a great resource and planning tool. It really breaks it all down for you, and walks you step by step through what you need to do to research, prepare for the trip, book the trip, and then most importantly how to make the most of your trip in the time allotted.

Italy for Dummies is an excellent book. I found it to be more down-to-earth and helpful than the more in-depth books. I would recommend it to anyone going to Italy for the first time.

I actually used mostly just this book to plan my 2+ week trip to Italy! Everything was pretty much true for the most part. One HUGE area I'd disagree with was Naples review. The book states that if you really want to see a true picture of Italy that a trip to Naples is a must. I highly recommend you stay away from Naples and stick to the other areas: Venice, Rome, Pisa, Pompeii, Florence. I went to all of these places and loved them all EXCEPT NAPLES!

The book needs to add that if you don't speak Italian then Naples is not an area to go to! I repeat DO NOT GO TO NAPLES IF YOU CAN'T SPEAK ITALIAN!

We found Italy for Dummies to be invaluable to our trip planning and in use on the trip. It was full of useful advice generally, and specifically, the maps and hotel and restaurant recommendations were apt and accurate. The Amazon online access was especially valuable, both because I was able to cut and paste (and print) custom maps specific to our plans before our trip, AND ON the trip because my fiance left the book on the kitchen table when we left. A best buy all round!