The Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) [Paperback]

Jonathan Buckley (Author), James McConnachie (Contributor), Hilary Robinson (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Rough Guide Travel Guides | Publication Date: August 2, 2001

One of the last great refuges for romantics, Venice sparkles in this new edition. Lively accounts of all the museums and monuments complement entertaining background on the city's rich history and current efforts to preserve its cultural legacy. A brand-new color map section helps you find your way around -- though we'll also show you how to get lost in hidden cafes, quiet churches, and area villages.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jonathan Buckley is one of the founding members of Rough Guides and still works for the company as an Editorial Director.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WHEN TO GO

Venice’s tourist season is very nearly an all-year affair. Peak season is from April to October, when hotel rooms are virtually impossible to come by at short notice; if possible give the central part of this period a miss, and at all costs don’t try to stay in July and August, when the crowds are at their fullest, the climate becomes oppressively hot and clammy, and many of the restaurants close down anyway. The other two popular spells are the Carnevale (leading up to Lent) and the weeks on each side of Christmas; again, hotels tend to be heavily booked, but at least the authentic life of the city isn’t submerged during these festive periods, as it is by the summer inundation.

For the ideal combination of comparative peace and pleasant climate, the two or three weeks immediately preceding Easter is perhaps the best time of year. The days should be mostly mild – though the weather can be capricious – and finding accommodation won’t present insuperable problems. Climatically the months at the end of the high season are somewhat less reliable: some November days are so clear that the Dolomites seem to start on the edge of the mainland, while others bring fogs that make it difficult to see from one bank of the Canal Grande to the other. However, the desertion of the streets in winter is magical, and the sight of the Piazza under floodwater is unforgettable. This acqua alta, as Venice’s seasonal flooding is called, is an increasingly common occurrence between October and March, and you should anticipate a few inconvenient days in the course of a two-week visit in winter. Duck-boards enable people to move dry-footed around the busiest parts of the city, but some low-lying areas – such as around Campo San Polo – become impassable to anyone without gumboots, and on certain freakish days the water rises so high that boats can be rowed onto the Piazza.

If you want to see the city at its quietest, January is the month to go – take plenty of warm clothes, though, as the winds of the Adriatic can be savage, and you should be prepared for some rain.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 5th edition (August 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858287200
• ISBN-13: 978-1858287201
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,321,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb! ...Move over, Lonely Planet!, December 28, 2001

By 

Renee Thorpe (Karangasem, Bali) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

Wow! Just got back from Venice, where we used this guide to find our pensione, restaurants (NO tourist ones), gelato, churches, the best tartuffi (chocolate truffles) in the world, and of course museums, attractions, and scuolas.

We never found anything to disagree with on their reviews, although they called our pensione "cheerless" despite the sunny south exposures that were a delight.

Best of all, the maps are cross-referenced to the text, so when reader looks up a restaurant review, the map location is noted and easily found (other guide books are infuriatingly lax in this simple and useful method).

Absolutely perfect!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mixed bag... wait for the new edition?, June 13, 2004

By 

David Loftesness (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

Just got back from a trip to Venice, and between us and our travelling companions we must have had 6 different books. This Rough Guide ended up being the book I carried with me when touring historical sites, as it had the most detailed descriptions and the best background information. The section at the end on Venice's history was fascinating. But the book is definitely getting dated -- many prices are still listed in Lire, and many of the hours of the various sights around town were incorrect. We also found the restaurant reviews a bit off from reality. Rick Steves' book was a much better reference for these things, particularly on restaurants which were all wonderful.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really 4.5, May 4, 2002

By 

John Andrew Deskins "Professional listener" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

Rough Guide definitely gets 5 stars for thoroughness. From cover to cover there is more information about Venice than I would have thought possible, or maybe even desirable!

Especially when it comes to information on neighborhoods, museums, scuole and the like, this is the best book of it's kind. I kept it in hand walking through the Accademia; I think they actually gave background information on every single painting in the place. The sections on the Doge's Palace and the Basilica are just staggering. Every tiny little campo, every plaque, every statue is covered with a thoroughness bordering on [tedium].

Unfortunately, this is also the Rough Guide's biggest drawback. The guide covers everything from the sublime to the mundane, and sorting through it all (and with no pictures!!?!?!) sometimes takes some effort. With a prose style more reminiscent of Henry James than Rolling Stone, I thought it seemed tedious at times.

Having said all that, the restaurant recommendations were dead-on, and they were forward-looking enough to attempt lira to Euro price estimations.

Recommended, but you may want to pick up something more entertaining for the flight over.