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| Rick Steves' Italy 2008 (Rick Steves) | 
 enlarge | Author: Rick Steves
Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $2.89
You Save: $19.06 (87%)
New (27) Used (23) from $1.91
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 100069
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 800
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 4.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1566918618
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.504929
EAN: 9781566918619
ASIN: 1566918618
Publication Date: September 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New and never read. Clean and crisp. Shipped First Class with Delivery Confirmation. Thanks for looking!
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Product Description
Who but Rick Steves can tell travelers the best way to see Rome, Venice, Florence, the hill towns of central Italy, the Dolomites, and the Amalfi Coast? With Rick Steves’ Italy 2008, travelers can experience the best of everything Italy has to offer — economically and hassle-free. Completely revised and updated, this guide includes opinionated coverage of both famous and lesser-known sights, friendly places to eat and sleep, suggested day plans, walking tours and trip itineraries, and clear instructions for smooth travel anywhere by car, train, or foot. America’s number one authority on travel to Europe, Steves' time-tested recommendations for safe and enjoyable travel in Europe have been used by millions of Americans in search of their own unique European travel experience.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Current, Actionable, Complete, Efficient - for 1st timers November 17, 2007
30 out of 30 found this review helpful
Not quite a tourists' yellow pages nor quite a piece of literature on Italian history, Rick Steves' Italy 2008 had everything (almost) we wanted and nothing we didn't in order to plan and execute our first Italy trip. My wife and I used this book for preparing our trip and found ourselves carrying it everywhere we went during the trip.
From form factor to content organization, the book reflects a certain level of maturity in writing and editing a travel book. The names of hotel and restaurant owners provided the much needed personal touch and ice breaker; little side notes minimize surprises due to benign mistakes that have a way of ruining good vacations; current information on trains, tours, hours, fees, phone numbers and maps take away the need to collect flyers as soon as you get to a new place. The book seems to have the right mix of information and opinion.
Don't use the book as a guided-tour replacement at museums. Information about Tuscany is minimal and sub-par compared to rest of Italy. Focused tourists (say second time Italy visitors) may not get everything they are looking for. For hotel reservations, we cross-checked the book's suggestions with consumer reviews on TripAdvisor.com and found that to be very useful. Other than that, you should be pretty well covered.
 Too chaotic and insufficient to depend on, but seems like a good overview read December 31, 2007
16 out of 32 found this review helpful
I just got back from Italy and used Rick Steves' Italy 2008 along with Fodor's Essential Italy (which did not cover Naples). I usually use Lonely Planet, but that wasn't available for Italy in a 2008 edition.
While I liked some things about the book, I did not like the fact that the table of contents for a city just lists that city. For example, under Rome in the table of contents is no breakdown. So Rome is listed as being on page 595, and the next entry is Naples which starts on 712. This is not user friendly at all. Who wants to sequentially flip through 117 pages looking for something on Rome, like where to eat, or how to get around? Not I! And the index is not a sufficient solution. Lonely Planet and Fodor's lays out what is in their chapters infinitely better in their respective tables of contents.
Steves' maps in the book were unimpressive when I needed them and were relatively useless to me when I was in Italy. However, I now see that the book had some color maps in the beginning of the book before the table of contents, and none of them are listed in the table of contents, where I jumped to get my info. Now that I see it, it looks like the maps of Florence and Venice are good for what they show, and the map for Rome is too general, not showing any street names in some areas where travel is likely. Only those three city maps appear in the front of the book. There are other maps of varying usefulness throughout the book.
I went to Pisa and only brought Steves' book with me. I gave it to my 16 year old nephew to find us a place to eat. He read the book's recommendations and looked at the book's map showing the location of one of the recommended restaurants, and headed us here and there until I finally took over and discovered that the map was just terrible and didn't include enough information to make it easy. A road that continued indefinitely was drawn as terminating within eyesight of the train station. And an insufficient number of streets were labeled to be of assistance in getting oriented. We walked around for a while and finally ran into the restaurant (which was not open, but that may be because it was the day before Christmas, so that is not an issue here).
One nice thing about the chapter on Naples is that the book tells where to find the information center in the train station, not that it is particularly difficult, but it is very useful. There you can get information and a map--which is definitely needed if you are using Steves' book. Before we got the map, we just used Steves' book to find a pizza place "filled with locals" (i.e., Italians that don't speak English) that the book recommended. There was no related map in the book, just a description that included "a few blocks from the train station" and, depending on what one considers a few blocks, that may have been an accurate description. But we walked what seemed to be more than a few blocks and didn't run into a street that we were supposed to run into. So we started wandering for a while and discovered that it was further than we expected. It was then that we discovered that the book didn't give us a clue as to what to do once we got to this restaurant where no one appeared to speak English and there was a crowd of people outside waiting for something. Then it turned out that if you went in you could get a number--which would have been fine, except I have no idea what 138 sounds like in Italian, and there was no sign giving the numbers. I ran into someone who was using Lonely Planet's Naples 2008, and apparently LP didn't have any info either on what you do once you get to that restaurant, though it also listed that restaurant. Finally we were able to discover that the numbers given out were for those who wanted to sit in the restaurant--and that for carry out you just went in and ordered what you wanted. I sent in my nephews who somehow found someone (a customer) in the restaurant who spoke English and Italian and were finally able to put it together for a carry out pizza.
Another thing I consulted Steves' book for was how to get to the airport from Naples central train station, which is where I originally arrived in Naples. Unfortunately Steves' book doesn't touch on that. Or at least I didn't think so until I just ran into the information just now. In the "Orientation" section of the Naples chapter (of course not listed in the table of contents), there is a section entitled "Arrival in Naples" and discusses arriving by train and by boat, not by jet. But if I had only read everything in the Naples chapter I would have seen that at the end of the chapter was a section entitled "Transportation Connections" which would have given me some information but lacks the clarity to have solved my problem. Even so, it would have been nice if that section name were listed under Naples in the table of contents.
The plus side of this book is the general information. The "Helpful Hints" section, with regard to theft, pickpockets, etc., has very useful information in it. But the book fell apart for me when I needed specific and clear information to accomplish getting somewhere or doing something.
The book is a nice read, but too frustrating to rely on, with too many limited-value maps, and a major hassle to find stuff in.
Great Details! October 25, 2007
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Rick Steves Italy is a great travel guide. When I first received it, I was a bit skeptical due to the fact that it was not as visually appealing as were other books I received on the same subject. Once I began reading the book, I was very much surprised as to how much detail and very important information the book provided. Examples of this are locations of where to be carefull of thieves to the exact street corner. Also, the book gave great detail on restaurants, hotels, and what to see including how to find them, who to ask for, and hours of operation, which helps in planning. Many other travel guides do not go into such detail. In my opinion, I would purchase as an example Fromers guide, and then in addition to that purchase Rick Steves as you will get much more detailed information about all the little things that make a difference in traveling to a city you have never been to.
My favorite Italy guide. February 18, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is my favorite Italy travel guide, and I buy each yearly update when it comes out. The Maps are the best for actually getting around!
Great travel book! January 2, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Once again, I was not disappointed by a Rick Steves book. He gives you everything you need to know to plan a great trip. Lots of details and personal recommendations. We have used his books in the past and have followed his suggestions for where to sleep and eat. He is rarely wrong. I highly recommend this book for any one who is traveling to Europe.
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