Customer Reviews

Knopf Guide: Venice (Knopf Guides)

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folks, this is the best idea for a tourbook/map that i have stumbled across yet. i'm not prone to raving, but this will garner praise from me until the cows come home (bearing foot & mouth) no doubt.

so, why is this so great? first of all, it's simple and well designed. the city is broken down into sections. you turn to those pages and there is a brief description of places to eat, shop, etc. the pages then open up into a map of the section with a description of major sites in the area.

brilliant! no fumbling around a big map trying to find your street. no squinting to figure out where you are. it's easy to find landmarks, metro stops, etc.

the card stock is nice and heavy and has lasted well even in my back pocket. the descriptions have been helpful without being too lengthy. and at this price, it's quite competitive with other maps while providing much more.

On my first trip to Italy, I spent 8 nights in Venice with this book and was not disappointed with any aspect of the descriptions, histories, and cultural commentary of the book, however, this was my first time booking a 'recommended' hotel and got burned bad. This is why in all the Knopf books I have reviewed, I consistently state that unless you are talking about a world class place, like the Cipriani, you must use another resource to get your hotel and restaraunt picks. While I love the Knopf guidebooks for Cities, Venice is a little 'tough'; compared to Rome, Paris, London, Dublin, or Munich and New York (Cities I have been to or live in). Therefore I offer the following caveat to the traveler beyond recommending this book unconditionally. Venice is tough, and really is a theme park. What I mean by this is the following: Venice lost half its native population from like 1920 to 1980. It then lost half of what remained of its native population from 1980 to 2000. Venice, (the main islands), has no industry, employees, or even citizens left not completely relegated to tourism. And the tourists do come. There were so many Americans in Venice that it felt like a mall on Long Island. The result is that every Venetian you meet is, shall we say, a little edgy having to deal with hoardes of foreigners from 7 am till 2 am, 7 days a week! I saw more locals being abused by tourists in Venice than anywhere else, so the locals get back at you with scams, charging for every little thing, and otherwise looking to shave am extra buck off of you at every turn. Most of the time I do not mind this, because frankly you couldn't pay me enough to do their jobs, but the only time I have every really been fleeced was in Venice. No Cote D'Azure, or Miami, or New York, clip joint could compare to Venice

The Knopf guide really does not go into this, and I guess it really can not, but watch for the following and frankly, I dont mind paying, believe me, but I balked at a lot of the following:

1) Paying for every church you go into. Paying within the church to stand on the balcony, and then pay again to go into the crypt. Paying to light up every painting in the church you might be interested in looking at.
2) Paying every time you check your coat, and then charging you extra to hang an umbrella. The Venice casino was a JOKE for doing this.
3) Any gondolier by himself looking to give rides is double, if not triple charging.
4) Hotels will claim to be air conditioned, then charge you per night. If you dont buy the a/c they will fill your room with skeeters by leaving the windows wide open through dusk when you are outside eating.
5) The Jumping off point into the City from the mainland has 500 scams. Do not let your rental agent hire you a water taxi cause you will be charged way over. Any boat, car hire, porter, that is away from the main action is scamming.

I have always found that going into a small out of the way place with locals is part of the fun of being away, but Venetians do not want to socialize with you, the tourist, for the most part, while you are on the main islands. You can go out to the Lido for the day, or stay in a beach hotel there, and everyone is their good old normal self again. But do stay in Venice for a few nights, because despite all this, Venice is unique in the world, and you will feel like Othello when you walk around at night, or early in the morning you see a cat sleeping in an old well.

To avoid a lot of this, stick to Rick Steves. I think Rick is great in general, but his Italy books are indispensible. I wish to God I had it in Venice. But I have no regrets, because I felt something unique there. For a fleeting glance, like taking a gondola at night with a full moon, when, in the back of some palaces you see the old water entrance and egress, you see in the light, or how the shadows look, and you hear no cars, you see something identicle to the way it was 800 years ago. In most of Europe you cant do that. In Venice you can!

The Knopf Guide Venice provides a colorful picture-packed in-depth guide to Venice and the surrounding attractions of the Venice Lagoon. Like all the Knopf guides there is an extensive introduction giving the historical background to Venice. The individual tourist attractions are described in great detail with copious illustration. I wish more photographs were used rather than drawings. This minor fault is common to all the Knopf guides. There are good sections describing Murano, Burano, Lido and San Michele (the Cemetery Island) as well as the obligatory tourist attractions.

A visit to Venice is a jarring experience; Venice being like no other place on earth. The real 18th century (and older) architecture seems almost fake, you have to pinch yourself to be reminded that it's not a new Disney ride: "Pirates of the Adriatic." The Knopf guide prepares you for all this if you have the foresight to read it in advance, before taking your trip. There is too much to take in during the typical brief tourist visit. There's great advice about what to try to see with itineraries for a 1-day, 3-day and weeklong visit. A great piece of advice is to get a feel for Venice by staking out a seat in the rear open area of a waterbus. If you buy an inexpensive multi-day pass, this gives you a cheap but comprehensive tour of the city and let's you get off and on repeatedly wherever you like.

Venice hotel rooms are small and expensive. You will pay more for a small walk-in-closet-sized room than for a comfortable room with sitting area in Room or Milan. Despite this, I think it is necessary to stay overnight rather than make daytrips from outlying suburban hotels in order to get the true flavor of the city. Walking through Venice at night makes you feel like a character in Othello; you won't get that if you have to leave at the end of the day. The Knopf guide does include some hotel recommendations but it's very limited. A better bet for choosing a hotel would be the Michelin Red Guide Italy. The Red Guide just gives listings with abbreviations describing the accommodations. The Knopf guide can give you an idea about the neighborhood your hotel is in before making a specific choice from the Michelin Red Guide.

This is the perfect companion for walking around Venice. You can open it discreetly to read the clear color maps or look up a restaurant, and then you can slip it back into your pocket. It's not in-depth enough to serve as your only source of information about this city, but that's not its purpose anyway. Leave the heavy, history-oriented guides in the hotel and take this one with you.

I just got my own Knopf Guide for Venice. No more having to renew at the library. While the Eyewitness guides are great for zeroing in on a desired sight, the Knopf series has much more detail about the place in question. I like to buy and read the Knopf guide about 6 months before I leave for my trip so I have plenty of daydream fodder, and then take the Eyewitness for when I actually get there.

The Knopf will take you to places that the regular tourists don't know about. Once you get there, if you've read the book, you'll know much more about these places than even some of the natives! My favorite things: The historical photos in the front, the drawings and photos of art (I especially enjoy these after I come home and am feeling nostalgic), and the hotel and restaurant listings in the back.

If you're going on a cruise or tour and have one day in Venice, forget it - don't bother with this book. But if you have any time to spend, this guide will provide you with some context for everything you're going to see. And if you don't want context, don't want to understand the city, why not just go to the casino in Las Vegas? The gondola ride will be WAY cheaper.

But if you do want to understand Venice, what it was, why it was important, and how its role in the world has changed, then dive into this wonderful book. Have a glass of wine and read through it again at night when you come home from your touring.

I loved this guide - read it cover-to-cover twice, then again when I got home. But one warning - it's not really the kind of book you tote with you in your bag to help you identify landmarks as you walk the city - the Eyewitness Guide works better for that. Neither is it the kind of book that will tell you where to buy the best marbelized paper. It's the kind of book that will tell you how marbelizing got started, who revived it, and how it's actually done.

Probably the most comprehensive and elegant guide to the city of Venice, with hundreds of photographs and color illustrations to augment the highly readable text (translated from the French by Anthony Roberts). The emphasis is on history, architecture, and art, but you'll also find a large section of practical advice and maps. The durable, flexible plastic cover is another significant plus. If you can afford only one Venice guidebook, this is the one you need. - Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co

This was an EXCELLENT little book. Of the small pile of guide books that we had in Venice, this is the one that we used most frequently. It's compact, the fold out maps are conveniently devided into sections of the city,and the maps are very clearly readable. I only wish that I had had one for Florence and Milan, too! What a gem.

We used this on a recent trip to Venice and found it to be very helpful. The maps and sites referenced for each section of the city were easy to read. Venice is confusing, even with the best maps and map reading skills, so we found this easy to carry around and great for quickly looking up info. We used this in conjunction with a Time Out Venice guidebook, and when used together with the Time Out maps, we could always find our way around.

Every day in Venice this book became more indispensable as it supplied background and information on EVERYTHING from birdlife, building a gondala or a bridge, to history, art, architecture... it both filled in details and gave a context to the truly amazing city I was visiting. This was an impulse buy - a richly rewarded impulse.