margo

Doing 2 nights Venice, 3 nights Florence, 3 nights Rome, 3 nights Amalfi. Never been to Italy before. Are these small citipacks with map included worth it?

Judy

Hello Margo, I personally like the Eyewitness guides best(Sorry, Fodors, I do have yours though). They are the most comprehensive IMHO. I just bought the Ireland book and it is wonderful. I did have the Fodors guide to Rome and it was very helpful FYI. Sounds like a great trip,,,,

Steve

I really like the Citypacks. I used them in March for Vienna and Prague. They have lots of useful info plus a map. The best thing is they are small and inexpensive. They are not what I'd use for in-depth research, but they're very good as "carry-alongs".

Jayelle

Although it may be blasphemy on this site, I'd also give a plug to the Lonely Planet Condensed guides. I have the guides for Paris and London, and found them very useful. They're about the same size as the City Packs, have great fold-out maps on the front and back covers, and contain all of the pertinent information.

Vanessa

I like te Frommers guide books the best. I bought an Eyewitness book before, and although they have great photos, they lack a lot of in depth information that a traveller needs. The Frommers guide books have a map, and I think they might be the only guide book with actual prices of hotels, and approximates on dinners. Other guide books give rather large price ranges that really don't help me out when planning my trip.

Dave

Lonely Planet also gives numerical prices (rather than those useless $$$ ratings). For me this is a critical determinant in guidebook selection, along with public transport details. <BR>

price ranger

I find it interesting that some of you specifically want exact prices. I would think that since guidebooks are written no less than 6 months before they're printed (often more like a year) and in the case of European cities they're employing a currency conversion that changes day to day, that exact prices are MORE annoying because the chances of them being close to correct are so remote.

Debbie

<BR>I too like the Eyewitness books. I have both the Great Britain book & the Ireland book. Both have been very helpful in planning my trips. ( I will admit - they are very heavy - good for planning the trip but I don't take them along.) <BR> <BR>I also like the Frommers driving tours book for Ireland. They may have one for Italy too. It has text & color photos & detailed maps, including mileages. <BR> <BR>just my opinion

Caitlin H

I'd have to agree about the doubtful value of exact prices. <BR> <BR>If they're accurate then they'd be great, but we took Frommors Italy from $70 dollars a day and also Greece from $50 dollars a day with us on our trip and found the prices for hotels quite inaccuarate. <BR> <BR>Caitlin

Dave

Yes, prices change, but inflation is fairly democratic, so the numbers are still useful for comparison. <BR> <BR>Also, maybe that cheap B&B is $25US instead of $20US; that's still better than only knowing it's rated as "less than $50US", the way some guidebooks do.

sheila

ttt

francophile03

They cost $12 and I don't think they are worth the cost. It's very thin-something like 100 pages. I'd rather get Frommers or Fodors guides.

soccr

I much prefer making my own custom &quot;Citypack,&quot; and it's part of the fun of preparing for the trip. But I don't think comprehensive is necessarily the best thing. Think about it -- how many &quot;pages&quot; of sights can you see in 3 days? Usually, just about 4-5 major things that are listed in 4-5 long paragraphs and that's it. The rest is weight. Citypacks have enough detail for many, many days there, and you might not need all those extra pages.

I go through a couple of the guides in the bookstore to see who has the best of what I want for that city -- note I didn't say &quot;most,&quot; I said &quot;best,&quot; because museums, parks, restaurants, and cybercafes are of particular interest to me. I don't find Walking Tours helpful (although many do), they just make it hard to find the description of a particular sight unless you are already in the neighborhood or on that page.

Anyway, I often tear out the pages that cover what I know I'll do, plus a few extras describing &quot;if there's time&quot; or &quot;if the museum is closed&quot; places, and staple them together. I also include whatever neighborhood or finding maps are in those books and the restaurant section. (I usually know where I'm going to stay.) Then I move on to maps.

I've traveled enough to be able to tell whether a map is going to be useful -- some are too big and detail too large an area; some are too mucked-up with icons and words and you can't see the streets; some have such &quot;fat&quot; streetlines that they run together and you can't read the names; some are going to require standing vulnerably on a street corner unfolding it into an entire paper spinnaker.

The best maps have insets with 2 or three levels of detail and include the public transportation system if there is one. Rome is the only city where that's really applicable, and you'll be able to get along with less for the others. Finally re: maps -- there are often much better (and more up-to-date)maps in the city itself than you can find at the local Barnes and Noble, and that would be particularly true of Amalfi, for example.

prue

Why is this Post which orginated in 2000 suddenly being topped and the Rick Steves hotels one of the same vintage??

janis

All those old threads are being topped because a fairly lazy poster asked a naff question abouy Italy guide books. Sheila suggested he do a search so all the old stuff wouldn't be re-hashed for the umpteenth time.

After some give and take &quot;there are only 2 old threads&quot;, &quot;well actually over 400&quot; and so on, sheila topped about 10 or 15 of them.

So there are several 2000, 2001, and 2002 threads floating around . . . . .

Clifton

Seems like a lot to make a point to me, but if it works...

kmed

City packs are fairly condensed so the information is not overly detailed. The maps are usually detailed but big and bulky...there is nothing worse than a tourist walking around with their nose in a very large map to mark you as a tourist. I prefer the small rough guides..I have one for Rome and Florence. The information is quite detailed and there are good maps in the back of the book. They practically fit in the palm of your hand. They don't have the nice photo's like the eye witness guides but are very practical when trying to keep luggage to a minimum. The National Geographic are also lovely but very bulky as well. I have photo copied the walking tours sections of that book as supplemental information to the rough guide for Rome.