Rick Steves' Italy 2008 (Rick Steves) | Rick Steves | This will save you time and Money!!!

Rick Steves' Italy 2008 (Rick Steves) | Rick Steves | Steves usually has a good take

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Rick Steves' Italy...

	Rick Steves' Italy 2008 (Rick Steves) Rick Steves Avalon Travel Publishing, 2007 - 800 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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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This will save you time and Money!!!

Dude, get the book. It saved us a ton of time in picking up our tix at the Palatine hills rather than at the Coliseum. It also got us to St. Peter's at 1pm with a 30 min wait, rather than do what everyone else does which is to arrive at 9am and have a 3 hour wait.

The tips alone is certainly worth worth every penny. Let's not forget the key things to see in his book and the slight bit of history on each place. However, I found the restaurants really difficult to find in Italy, but I had a tough time finding the Coliseum too:P

Steves usually has a good take

Rick Steves did a great job on his ITALY 2008 book. I was going to the Cinque Terre and he has a great breakdown for that area in the book. Also, he made good calls on nearby Pisa and Lucca. Steves said that one need not spend A LOT of time in these cities and he is right. A few hours to see the main sights in Pisa (3 including the leaning tower) are fine and a good 2-hour walk-a-round in Lucca is enough too. Special Note on Lucca: Puccini was born in Lucca and they perform recitals of his works in one of the churches there. This would be worth an overnight to catch a recital if you want to soak in more culture than you can from just street scenes. Suggestion: travel to Pisa early in the day, visit the Field of Miracles, then end up in Lucca in the PM (short train ride between the two) for your overnight. Do your Lucca walk-a-round PLUS attend a Puccini recital. Then you will have done most if not all of what you should do in these two "competing" towns. Steves points out stuff like this. This was the first time I used a Steves book. Normally I use Michelin Green Guides. But now I would use more tour books by Steves. His style is engaging, even if sometimes it might be a bit preachy for those of us who already know how to mind our (American) manners! In my travels in early June 2008 I did not see any Americans out of line, whatsoever. Not along the Cinque Terre and not at either Pisa or Lucca. In fact, I did not note anyone out-of-line, or drinking too much, or similar stuff, in any of my recent travels. I accept such things can happen, but during my recent excursion I did not notice any such disappointing behavior.

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Great guidebook

I have bought about 10-15 guidebooks for an upcoming Mediterranean Cruise and have read each one. This one is my favorite - Rick tells it like it is, I've learned very interesting facts that weren't in any other guidebook. I also appreciate that he reviews from budget to luxury options, so you can choose based on your day's plans - for example, where to eat. Many guidebooks only review sit down restaurants when you might only want a quick panini if you are going to be touring all day. He also offers walking tours of several of the major sites. He lists things to do if you only have a day in one place, which is great for cruisers. There is also a useful appendix. The paper is very thin, so highlighters will bleed through to the opposite page a little bit. However, this book is very compact for the information that it contains. It's 800-900 pages and only about an inch thick. I will actually take this with me and carry it around on my trip.

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A Very Good Book

Rick Steve's takes the approach that you will only visit a major European country one time. With that in mind he tries to tailor your visit to focus your attention on only the most important things. I have used his books for 9 years and have found that his tastes do not match mine in most things, but if Rick recommends something as a must see, you ignore it at your peril.
I always use Rick's books as the skeleton of my trip plans, picking out his top choices, and then I flesh out my trips with other sources that are a better match for my tastes.
If you are planning repeat visits to a country you will quickly find that his books are worthless. If you stray from his well blazed trail of long published "secrets" you will be on your own. But his approach is a very good one for a first time visit. Just don't expect to be finding any great travel treasures that no one knows about. There are "As seen in Rick Steves" signs all over Europe.

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Good if you're going to Italy, but...

if you're staying in certain cities, it'd be better to get his Rome, Florence and the Tuscany region and the Venice book.

We used the Italy book, it had nice recommendations on food, hotels and such. They were excellent. Had recommended sights. But the tour guide section found in his Rome book were missing from the Italy book. Because you really can carry around a huge book. If I were to do it again, I would have gotten individual books. But if I were to go to multiple cities, this would definetly be the book to get.

On our trip we went to Rome and Florence.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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