Part of the Lonely Planet Country Guide series. Market-leading, best selling guide to the world's fourth most popular destination. Practical advice and detailed itineraries make trip planning easy.

Part of the Lonely Planet Country Guide series. Market-leading, best selling guide to the world's fourth most popular destination. Practical advice and detailed itineraries make trip planning easy.

2005-07-21 Good - but not exceptional

This is a good guide book, as all the guide books in the series, but I did expect a bit more from it. I travelled around Italy together with my husband the summer of 2005, and we used this guide book a lot. But it is a guide book, nothing more. There are quite a bit of things that have changed since the book was last edited, but this is expected. We are planning to send the findings we did to the editor, so that it can be added or changed in the next edition, perhaps.
We felt that the book focused too much on churches, castles etc, and a lot of really interesting things were missed - like the local food markets, which we love to visit. There wasn't much of "different" or "special" recommendations, it was just focusing on the "What to see if you are a tourist", while what you remember are the things "sticking out". You can only look at so many churches during three weeks...
You could also find that the author(s) recommended one area in the top part of a column, but further down it was the other way around. It was obvious that the text was not written by one person only, but by several, and then compiled into one lump of text. I was aware that several people helped writing the book, and for a guide book I believe that is good, but the texts should be kept separate. Now it became very obvious at times that two people with different opinion had written parts of one text.
These guidebooks do not at all talk about how life is for the locals, if there are any "local speciallities" in regards to food and whine etc. Considering Italy is one of the best food countries in the world, I think this is a pity!

Funny is that we actually managed to end up at one of the hotels that the book recommended, although we didn't plan for it. I didn't realise we were at the recommended place until the day after we checked in. Some parts I might want to read more carefylly next time... It was an excellent little place, though, and we really enjoyed it!

So, in short: Get this guide book, but don't let it be your only guide, make sure you stop by the local touristinfo and pick up some info as well! And have fun in Italy!