Customer Reviews

On the Road Around Northern Italy : The Definitive Fly-Drive Guide

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if anything was going to put me off the idea of going anywhere near italy, this book would be it. unfortunate tone, boring and uninfluential - (don't) keep trying.

In planning a 16 day driving tour of Northern Italy, I found this book to be enormously useful. I have driven around Portugal, Norway, Switzerland, etc. but had never been to Italy. Maps in the front show specific stretches of road and areas of particular interest, and give the page number of the chapter that describes each route. The introduction to each chapter gives a succinct overview of the route that gives one a good sense of what to expect, and then describes the route in greater detail--direct route vs. scenic route, sights and towns along the route, accommodations and food, sightseeing, etc. For my purposes, I was especially pleased with the descriptions of the scenery and with the "side tracks" feature, which describes worthwhile sidetrips. I was able to note the routes that I preferred and plot out a practical itinerary. Then I turned to other books (Rick Steves and the Rough Guide to Italy) to get more detail about some of the places we were going to visit.

In summary, I think this is a great book for planning driving tours of Italy--vastly better than any other I have found, including Frommer's "Italy's Best-Loved Driving Tours".