Hi, I love slowtrav, go there everyday and I DIDN'T win anything in the contest. People are incredibly generous there with their free advice. It's a great online community! I check Fodor's probably once a week, or more during intense planning sessions.
jan

I haven't quite "used" it, but I sometimes go and read the discussions in the Italy section. On rare occasions I feel like posting as well. Several regulars on that board are foreigners who live in Italy, and a few are Italians, so the Italy section can be interesting and fairly active. I don't think I've ever asked for advice on the Italy board, though, since I generally travel alone, staying in a several different bases on each trip, and travel around by public transportation. Therefore I don't fit the profile of the kind of travel SlowTrav encourages. That is, I don't rent a house or apartment and travel from that base by car. Renting a car is just not something I would do alone, becaue of the expense, the difficulty, and the isolation of it. It's annoying (or worse) if I ask some question on Fodors, making it very clear that I will be traveling by public transportation and not driving, and someone posts back and says "Oh, but you can't possibly enjoy_____ without a car," as I think happened to me when I posted some questions before a last-minute trip to Umbria a few years ago. However, on SlowTrav, since that's their emphasis, I'd have to expect that type of reply, and that's why I refrain from asking questions, at least re my solo trips.

A few months ago, I had been planning a trip to France with a friend. It would have been the kind of trip Slowtrav "approves of," i.e. staying put in a rental for a week and driving around in a rented car, shared by two people. We ended up canceling our plans for this year. But before it was canceled, I posted some questions on Slowtrav re car rental procedures, places to stay near Oradour-sur-Glane, driving routes, etc.--nothing too esoteric. I posted there as an alternative to burdening one person with travel-question e-mails. I did get some very good answers. However, nearly all the informative replies were from the same person I would've e-mailed anyway. In general, the France board on Slowtrav was very inactive, and questions could go unanswered for days, or forever, unless certain people happened to be around. Other countries are even less covered than France. For example, I browsed around looking for info on Greece and Portugal, and I don't remember whether I found very little or nothing at all.

Slowtrav is a pleasant, polite forum, and there's none of the nastiness that we find on Fodors. But it also lacks that little bit of edge or spice that might make it lively and interesting. The regulars are a relatively small group. There is paid advertising permitted, but in addition to that, there does seem to be a bit of promotion of people's businesses in the regular threads--not such a terrible thing actually, in my opinion, but if you are brand new to the site, you might want to be aware that some cooking school, for example, that people are recommending, might be run by someone who's a regular poster on the Italy board, and that the recommendations are maybe compliments exchanged among friends. The tone is sometimes a bit too self-congratulatory for my comfort, but basically it's a nice site, and at least the Italy section has the potential to become quite useful if it attracts more people with various types of expertise regarding additional regions.

I found slowtrav first, as we started planning our first trip to Italy with our two kids for this March 2005 (Spring Break). Now I read Fodors and SlowTrav daily to get ideas and advice. I personally found it very helpful and got us to limit our two week visit to only 3 cities rather than 4, which we feel so much better about. As they say on SlowTrav we will be back and will see the other places next time!
Glad to hear that their France site is picking up as we hope to go to Paris/France the following Spring Break (March 2006). Hope it will be more active in a year!!

I honestly didn't see any signs that the France section is becoming more active, but maybe I don't know how it used to be. (There is at least more content about France than about Greece.) There are questions sometimes, but relatively few people giving answers, and generally the very few people posting informative answers are also posting here, sometimes in response to the same questions, posted by the same people, here. But maybe it will eventually become more active. Just right now I wouldn't count on it.

I'm a crossover as well mainly using the Italy section. It's amazing how much information is offered there as is on Fodor's.

Together these two sites make one great travel agent!

One more word about slowtrav. I would venture a guess that 90% of the questions about Italy asked on this forum are already answered in the rich content at slowtrav if you just navigate the site. Read first, then ask questions.

Have used them for apartments in Rome, Venice and Florence and an apartment in Paris (once). Love slowtrav and want to do more slow travelling as soon as possible. And as often as possible.

Sigh.

Slotrav also has the link to the infamous Sorrent web-cam.

Slowtrav is a great resource for stuff like "how do I work the washing machines in Italy", "how do I get served in a bar" etc. I've been all over their information section and it's great.