Customer Reviews

Let's Go 2000: Rome: The World's Bestselling Budget Travel Series (Let's Go. Rome, 2000)

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

 

 

Let's Go Rome 2000 is overall a good guide of Rome, with decent coverage of the sights that most visitors would want to see in the Eternal City. The guide's inclusion of daytrip destinations from Rome was useful, and the informative 1st section of the guide was indispensible for planning my trip. Particularly helpful were the "scam alerts" that Lets Go points out for you to avoid, as I was able to spot a couple of scams before they came to me. I don't give this guide a higher rating for two reasons. First of all, the maps in it are horribly inadequate. If you plan to buy this guide, be sure to buy a separate, comprehensive map of Rome. A friend who was traveling with me had the Let's Go Rome MapGuide, which was very good, so they are capable of making a decent map; they just fail to include the decent maps in the Guidebook. Second, the recommended places to eat and stay were pretty seedy. I know that the focus of the guide is for the budget traveller, but as a budget traveller, I can vouch that not far from some of the restaurants they recommend (in Florence, for instance), there are classier, better restaurants for about the same price as those in the guide. This wasn't much of a problem, as Rome is teeming with good places to eat and stay, but I found the recommendations in this guidebook useless. Other than those two complaints, LetsGo Rome 2000 was a good guidebook and I would use LetsGo again.

I am not sure what the authors of this book were trying to do, but they definitely did not succeed in writing a historically accurate guide of Rome. The authors make unsuccessful attempts at humor, and fill the pages of this book with several glaring grammatical errors: Ex: "As the spiritual leader of millions of Catholics around the world, the pope's influence..." The dependent clause in the first part of the sentence is modified by "the pope's influence." How can the pope's influence be a spiritual leader? I don't even want to go into the "humor," because that is even worse. Usually, Let's Go guides are very witty. This guide was NOT funny, and Let's Go should find new authors. The guide had SOME useful info, and enabled me to get around the city okay, but the guide lacked the kind of historical information about Rome that one finds in the Eyewitness Guides for example. As a matter of fact, it appears that much of Let's Go Rome was derived from better-written, more historically accurate guides. There are definitely better guidebooks on the Eternal City than this one.

I had the opportunity to visit Rome in October 1999, and I took the 1999 Let's Go Rome guide along with me. I've also had a chance to review this one. I was quite happy with the recommendations of restaurants and sights. Except for a single case, all the restaurants were enjoyable and reasonably priced. Make sure you go to Margutta Vegetariano RistorArte (sic), close to the Spanish Steps. This vegetarian restaurant has the most stunning foor imaginable. I'm not a vegetarian, but I could be after that experience. (And I'm not even being paid to say this!) Just one of the treasures the guidebook pointed out. Also, if you're going for a week or two, I'd stay in the city. I spent four days in the Vatican Museum alone, and saw about half of it. There's more than enough to do and see without spending your time on a train going somewhere else in Italy. You might want to save Florence, Venice and other cities for another trip! I highly recommend this book as a thorough guide to the city, rather than the 10 pages you'll find in some "Visit Europe" compendium.

I loved this edition of Let's Go. A delightful, lighthearted introduction to Rome and its history, the book provides helpful suggestions and clear maps.

Not to be trusted and (a worse problem) almost unreadable.

Even worse than the fact that this may be the worst-written Let's Go book ever is the bad advice that punctuates the bad writing. Christina Svendsen and her staff consistently direct readers to the seediest parts of the Eternal City. If you are an over-priveleged Harvard student with an utter disregard for your safety, this is the book for you. Oh yes -- and to get your money's worth, you should also have an abysmal sense of humour.

i used let's go rome on a recent trip to rome while on holiday and found it quite useful, actually. rome has a lot of history and consequently contains an incredible number of historical sights scattered across its seven hills, and this book was very comprehensive in presenting all that history while also putting a fun little twist on things. great, just simply great. as for the previous review: i actually found the humor quite funny and at times found myself stifling loud laughs (it was the vatican, i didn't want to seem rude or anything!) because of funny things i kept reading in the book. and as for the grammar--umm, i don't know about you, but i care more about the information in a guidebook than the grammar. and the information in this one was spot on. (incidentally, the grammar was correct for the most part. and i'm a high school english teacher, so i think i would know correct grammar when i see it. but who cares.) highly recommended for your next trip to rome. enjoy!

this guide is written poorly and does not compare with lonely planet. The authors of this book were definitely more concerned with being cute than informative. Their jokes weren't even funny and their instructions often very poor. Luckily, I had a great time in Rome despite them, having bought a much better guide as well as this one.

Of all the tour books I used in my recent trip to Italy (and considering I'm a tour book junkie I used quite a few), Let's Go Rome was the worst. Although allright for a guide to the sights (although I believe their policy must be if it sells tickets, it goes in the book regardless of quality) it's recommendations for everything else were terrible. By the end of our trip my companion wanted to ceremonially burn the book. Enough said?

more than any other Let's Go book i've used - and i've used many - this book reveals the immaturity of its writers.