Customer Reviews

Time Out Rome 4 (Time Out Rome Guide, 4th ed)

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

 

 

A British publication that covers everything thoroughly and with a sense of British humour and irreverence the Time Out Guides are always good for whatever city they cover. Very good coverage of hotels and restaurants, sightseeing attractions, and the very best for after hours entertainment, whether it is dance clubbing (which the Brits love to do) or sit down music venues, English speaking movie theaters in Rome, what to do with children and some nearby day trip excursions.
Insightful, accurate, complete, easy to carry. Maps are very good, history overview good, attraction descriptions good.
Definitely a pre-trip research must, not big on photographs, excellent on getting the feel for the city.

I bought 5 Rome travel guides (Time Out, DK, Insight, Rick Steves, and Knopf), and my best friend borrowed another. Unlike Rick Steves and Frommers, Time Out Rome had a fairly reliable restaurant section with corresponding maps. Thus, it was the only guide I took out of the hotel room during our 2+ week stay. Since I have no desire to pay for any more relatively expensive inedible food with heinous customer service, I will be buying Time Out guides from now on. By the by, almost all the other tourists were carrying DK guides (in several languages). I only saw a couple Midwesterners carrying Rick Steves (they were the ones reading the tour sections aloud) and another New Yorker carrying Time Out. It's a must have if you want to eat a decent meal.

Time Out books are one of the best guidebooks available. Fairly small but comprehensive. East to pack and take with you on vacation. Very good maps.
Just be sure to make sure the edition is fairly recent as all travel info
changes rapidly. This edition was just a little out of date.

I bought this guide book because I was familiar with the TimeOut magazine. This book is full of vivid descriptions and important information. However, because of all the descriptions, it is not so easy to use as a quick reference. I used it more as background reading for what I was about to see the next day or had just seen earlier in the day. Great amount of information for the price!

A mercifully short review:

The Time Out city guides are almost uniformly excellent and this one is no exception. Skip the standard Rome fare and take this book with you; it is filled not only with the usual restaurant and hotel reviews, but goes into areas that the mainstream publications don't want to touch, e.g., gay and lesbian Rome.

Even an edition that is a few years old is valuable; Rome has been around more than a few millenia; what is a few years to it?

I was really excited to use these guidebooks. I had heard a lot of good stuff about them and they looked great when I was leafing through them. It seemed like we would have the "locals" guide to Rome. but boy was i wrong. After arriving in Rome, the books proved to be useless. Every restaurant we wanted to try seemed to be located on a street that didn't exist. I had three different maps I was using, and none of them had the streets on it. These books are great for history, but that's about it. Don't waste your time..