4 comments about Waterproof Venice Map by Rough Guide Maps (Rough Guide Country/Region Map).

1. I went to Venice for the first time in May 2007 and found this map indispensable. It was better than many other maps I had researched and better than maps that I saw for sale in Venice! Would definitely recommend to anyone going to Venice, particularly if it is your first visit to this beautiful yet very easy to get lost in city.



2. Used the Rough Guide maps for Venice, Florence, and Rome and found them to be top notch. They have far more detail and accuracy than the maps handed out by hotels and local TI offices. The paper is coated so that it withstands serious abuse, fold, refold, stuff it in your pocket in a wad, it always comes out with all the print intact. The coating adds negligible bulk, more than worth it for the durability.



3. I have lived in Venice for four years. My sister still lives there so I go every year. I still have some trouble finding restautant locations. I have used many maps of Venice, most of which I purchased there. Well, this was the best map I have ever seen. No one should go to Venice without it. There is absolutely no other map on which things are so clearly marked. Judy Potter, Esquire



4. I used this map to navigate Venice for 5 days and I would have been lost without it (literally). It was better than any other map I looked at and any of the maps for sale in Venice. Even my friend living in Venice commented on how good a map it was. The map also includes info on the water bus route and opening days and times for churches, museums, etc., basically eliminating the need to carry a guide book around all day. It is durable and waterproof, but it feels like paper and you can still write on it.
   
   I'm glad I didn't buy a map for Florence, because I got by just fine on a free map from a hotel. But a map was essential for Venice and this one was perfect.

5 comments about Waterproof Map of Rome by Rough Guide Maps (Rough Guide Country/Region Map).

1. At last - a map which is unfazed by sweaty pockets, being crumpled up in a tote bag, rain showers, or endless handling. We mauled this map all through hot sweaty Rome and it was perfect. Everything is on there. No, it is not a guide book! It's a map - and a really good one.



2. This was an excellent map of Rome. Like the other Rough Guide maps, it is extremely durable. After 4 days in Rome, it still looks brand new.



3. This map is great since it is designed to be water resistance. I am presently using it to plan our stay in Rome this spring.



4. Rough Guide maps make other maps look like child drawings. Do not leave home without one. The extras, like the "time map" with all the opening hours of major museums and churches, in addition to just the quality of the map itself (everything being to scale, the nice color scheme, etc.), make this map perfect. The fact that it's indestructible (plastic) is an added bonus!



5. Used the Rough Guide maps for Venice, Florence, and Rome and found them to be top notch. They have far more detail and accuracy than the maps handed out by hotels and local TI offices. The paper is coated so that it withstands serious abuse, fold, refold, stuff it in your pocket in a wad, it always comes out with all the print intact. The coating adds negligible bulk, more than worth it for the durability.

2 comments about Streetwise Milan Map - Laminated City Street Map of Milan, Italy -with integrated metro map including lines and stations.

1. Streetwise gives me so many details that I don't need a personal guide. Just by carefully analyzing the map I could see many places that I wanted to visit. I'm an independent traveler and Streetwise is my tour guide!



2. We used this on a week-long stay in Milan. Sufficiently detailed to walk around minor streets (which change names frequently). I did not use this for driving in Milan, a GPS would be better then. Shows metro stops (M1,M2,M3) in context with city streets.

5 comments about Rick Steves' Italy Map: Including Rome, Florence, Venice and Siena City (Rick Steves).

1. I guess it comes with the territory of a travel guide that is this popular. I bought a few books to plan a 2 week vacation in Italy. This travel guide had great ideas, but I was unable to book a single hotel in Rick Steve's book. I travelled in October and tried to make reservations in the previous April-May. My husband and I both felt it would have been wiser and probably cheaper to travel with a tour company that allows a lot of individual choices, instead making all our reservations and plans ourselves.



2. My wife and went to Italy in Sept. 2007, it was amazing to see how many people had the same book. We really liked the book for the suggestions for sites (rating system he uses for must sees) and suggestions for eating estabishments. I thought the suggestions for lodging were a little bit more then our budget could afford...there are great travel sites on the web that can offer lodging at reasonable prices, we did go to some of the dining places and they were great.



3. Rick Steves is nerdy but he does his homework. Don't think about planning a trip to Italy without this book. Read the book before going to Italy and keep it in your carry-on when traveling. I'd like even more help with places to stay and to eat but the book still proved to be indispensable.



4. 1/2 of the cities i visited were not on his book. took it to italy with me, left it in the bag most of the time.



5. I put "MAP REVIEW" in my title, as it seems that most of the reviews here are for the book? How does that make sense?
   
   This map was good for us as it covered our itinerary - Venice, Florence, Siena, and Rome. The landmarks were helpful, as well as the designations for pedestrian areas and shopping areas. The map is fairly heavy paper, so it will last even if it's not laminated.
   
   My main complaint is the map didn't have enough street level information. So if you're navigating by yourself, you may need another map if you're looking for a particular street location. Also, the maps are marked with the English version of the names of landmarks; for me, I find this confusing when walking around a city.

2 comments about Michelin Toscana, Umbria, San Marino, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzo (Michelin Maps).

1. These Michelin individual maps are really too big to be of much use unless you have a navigator who can fold it up on their lap. Michelin sells spiral bound volumes. If they have one for where you are going it's the best. This map would be OK for planning for travel by car. Not much help for train travel.



2. Bot this to plan a 3 wk. car trip to Tuscany, Umbria & Lazio & brought it along for using during the entire trip. Absolutely fantastic! Even when we missed a turn because a road sign was misplaced or missing, we could still figure out where we were and how to get to our final destination easily with this map. Michelin's maps always work superbly for us, and that's all we use whenever we're doing a car trip on our own for countries they map.

5 comments about Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria: Revised Edition (Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria).

1. My wife and I just returned from a two-week trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we had planned to do several walks in this book. Although the book does not even pretend to address tourists traveling by car, we assumed that would not be a problem, and we were wrong. For example, we set out from Lucca to do #13, a walk in the Garfagnana. Naive American drivers need to know that the road to the trailhead, while beautiful, is a heavy industrial corridor with a large number of trucks as well as cars driving to defy death at high speed on a road that is often only wide enough for one vehicle, usually with no shoulder, often skirting sharply around mountain switch-backs with steep drop-offs. Traffic frequently stops as truck and bus drivers try to figure out who is going to back up, and how, to let the other go by. If you have a car, absolutely only consider doing this walk on the weekend. Also, we attempted #2, the Lamole ring walk. On a typical mid-October day, overcast and drizzling, there was absolutely no place to leave the car, which was very disappointing considering the effort to get there. The one walk we did do, #23, the Monteriggioni ring walk, was ok, but a very long stretch of it, from just after Abbadia a Isola to C. Giubileo, is continuously up a steep grade on a gravel road, mostly with minimal views, and gets to be a real drag. Also, and possibly not the authors' fault, the directions fail near the presumptive end when you encounter CAI signs with different numbers than the authors indicate, and trail options that don't quite fit the description. We got lost and went much further southeast than we should have, adding a pleasant enough but unplanned hour to the trip. Also, the Montauto spur access is completely overgrown now with thick, high thorn bushes at least 20 to 30 feet deep behind the well near the beginning. In sum, I was left wondering how big the target audience for this book is. Although we had a car, we were told that bus schedules are not particularly reliable outside the larger cities. After spending two weeks in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, it appears to me that, with the amount of time typical travelers have, the hassle and waste of time taking (and waiting for) busses to and from trailheads away from the major centers would just eat up too much precious time. Although there is a lot of good information in this book and it's obviously an earnest effort, we did not find it very useful. If you want to hike or, per the authors' distinction, walk, in Tuscany and Umbria, and have a car, this can be one source of many to help you out, but you need other resources. We got some good info at an information center at the base of Orvieto that led to the best hike of our trip, but note that information centers seem to be closed for unknown reasons frequently. Next time, we plan to do more research, learn a little more Italian, learn more about the CAI system in general, and buy more maps and resources before we go.



2. I first discovered this book on a trip to Italy in 1999, and after my first walk I was hooked. The walk (Lamole Ring walk) took me to a place I never would have found on my own, and the experience of visiting this lovely off-the-beaten-track hamlet and its beautiful surrounding countryside on foot turned out to be the highlight of my vacation. The restaurant recommended (the only one in Lamole) was also one of the best I've ever eaten in, and was at the same time friendly and not terribly expensive.
   I used the book extensively when I returned in 2003, doing seven more of the walks (mostly in the "Southern Tuscany" section) and they have all been splendid. However, I encountered several changes (more on the restaurant side than the actual walking side, though there were also some of those), and was hoping the authors would do a new edition by the time I was next lucky enough to be going to Italy. I think I was probably one of the first people to use the new edition when I went this September (2004) and I am happy to report it was excellent! I drove first to Lamole (where - in spite of another reviewer here who must have been looking for an American-style parking garage - there is no problem whatsoever in parking your car: it's just a tiny hamlet and you can park anywhere you like) and found the restaurant to be still at the top of its form, still friendly and unpretentious. The walk has been improved in that formerly there was a stretch on the road (admittedly untrafficked, but road nonetheless) which has now been replaced with a shortcut through the woods. After my walk I drove up to hotel/hostel/restaurant on top of San Michele, and spent the night there, amidst the sighing evergreens there at the top of the mountain. Sublime!
   One further observation: Don't buy the old edition! Amazon only shows the old edition unless you type "2005 edition" into your search!!!



3. We used this book for a trip to Umbria with our children ages 9 and 12 this September and thought it was great, both for the walking and the eating. We have been to Tuscany several times and wanted to branch out to Umbria on this last trip, and can only say we wish we had done so sooner. We stayed in the lovely town of Norcia, and did the "san Eutizio" walk: an amazing adventure with children! Norcia was an easy place to be with kids, the hotel recommended in the book was extremely friendly, the town had such a safe feeling and enough of interest (particularly the gelato bar) to the kids to keep them busy. The walk - one of the longer ones in the book - was an ambitious one for kids, but gave them an exceptional feeling of accomplishment at the end, and they loved the beautiful abbey at San Eutizio, especially enjoyable on our visit because as we ate dinner at the tiny restaurant next door (the only building in the immediate environs) there was a wedding going on, which spilled into the outdoors. While my husband and I lingered over our "vino," the kids went inside the abbey and mingled with the wedding party stragglers, a few of whom - along with our kids of course - crawled through an ancient tunnel behind the altar, an action that is supposed to cure all ills.
   We also went up to Castelluccio, the mountain village about 15 miles from Norcia, which was stunningly beautiful, remote, and virtually deserted. There is a small restaurant there which was fabulous, and the sunset behind the austere Sibillini mountains was a stunning backdrop to our outdoor meal. Next time we would plan to stay in this tiny village overnight.
   Note: we had the 2005 edition, and the friend who recommended this book says the san eutizio walk wasn't in the original.



4. The original edition of this book, written nearly ten years ago, needed
   updating, so we went back to Italy, this time with two young children.
   We've updated the original walks and restaurant reviews and added some new
   walks and locations. If you are thinking of buying the book, make sure you
   have the newer edition (both editions are available on Amazon, and the newer
   one is also cheaper). To order the new edition type "walking and eating
   2005" (without the quotation marks) into Amazon's search box.
   
   If you have any questions about the book, please feel free to email me at:
   walkingandeating@aol.com. Over the years we have had so many letters from
   people about the book, saying what a difference it made to their holiday. We
   hope you enjoy it.



5. The walks in this book are great!
   With this guide, you can truly get off the main tourist routes and into the Tuscan back country for a very different experience of Tuscany.
   In mid May 2007, we did the walk from Greve in Chianti to Radda, and a walk from Pienza to Montepulciano. On the Greve to Radda walk, we hiked in the woods, saw wild boars, and spent a most enjoyable two days in Volpaia, a little town of 50 people, some hundreds of years old, surrounded by vineyards in the Tuscan hills.
   The walk from Pienza to Montepulciano was beautiful. The classic Tuscan views of hills, cypress, winding country roads.
   If you enjoy walking and want a non tourist view of beautiful Tuscany, I do strongly recommend this book!

5 comments about Streetwise Florence Map - Laminated City Street Map of Florence, Italy.

1. We purchased this map from AMAZON only weeks before our trip to Italy. Either it was incorrect from the start or has never been updated since its publication....or there are one way gremlins afoot at the publishers!!After trying every approach into central Florence using this map we realized that at least HALF of one way streets are WRONGLY MARKED! Finally we chucked the map and followed the actual street signs and found our hotel.



2. Driving directions can change on a dime (see previous review), but walking the streets, so to speak, rarely changes. There are maps with more detail, but this map is an essential. Lightweight, laminated (waterproof), pocket-sized, and with almost all the detail that most Florence visitors need. Fully-opened, it is still small and easy to use. A handy gazeteer lists many streets and monuments, with map grid locations. There are some very tiny streets/alleys that are hard to make out, but that is true for almost any pocket-sized folding map.



3. I have purchased several Streetwise for various cities. I found ALL of them to be useful. For Florence, it was particularly useful because the streets in Florence are narrow and not straight. You can easily get a bit lost - but not if you have the Streetwise map with you. You can use it to quickly get your location, and to see where the nearest piazza, church or museum is located. It also takes you across the Arno to the Piti Palace and Boboli Gardens. It is easy to carry and for someone who has progressed to bifocals -- easy to read.



4. Great map. Used it a lot. Needed my reading glasses to see the small print.



5. I have been to many European countries and I always buy a streetwise map before I go. These maps are convenient, folds up easy to fit into a purse or backpack, very accurate and laminated. While in Florence it rained often. The map constantly got wet and was dropped in puddles a few times. The map held up great and I do not go to any new place with out one.

5 comments about Streetwise Venice Map - Laminated Center City Street Map of Venice, Italy - Folding pocket size travel map (Streetwise).

1. My husband and I found this map to be extremely helpful, in large part because of the clear identification of the monuments. It's worth the money to have it for the first day or two until you get your bearings.



2. It's a pathetic small map of Venice.
   Only room for main island, even that much to small.
   No information at all.
   If you want good map of Venice, buy the Borch.



3. I have many maps from visiting Italy and have ordered some that were similar from the hotel lobbies, but this one is excellent compared to those. It shows all the little side canals and even has the canal where my future hotel is, which based on trip advisor comments, alot of travelers had a hard time locating. I am happy with this map - streetwise Venice; as well as streetwise Rome.



4. And sturdy to carry around with you. But if you're older, you will need reading glasses!



5. This map was very useful when we were in Venice. However, some of the street names are slightly different - for example, a letter might be missing out of the street name in the map. If you pay close attention, you shouldn't have a problem! I don't know if there are any maps of Venice that are 100% accurate, but this one was close enough for us.

5 comments about Michelin Italy: Tourist and Motoring Atlas (Michelin Tourist and Motoring Atlas : Italy).

1. This is our second purchase of the Michelin Italy Atlas as we used the first so much that pages were torn and missing. We find it to be one of our better map guides for traveling in Italy.



2. I haven't field tested this atlas yet, but I like it already. Its very light, so it won't be a burden in my carry-on. It has detailed maps of a lot of towns too.



3. Rick Stevens says the traditional road atlas needs be 1/300,000 or larger scale in order to be useful for guiding drivers on the road. This atlas has the right scale.
   
   I have a GPS navigator (Tomtom GO 720) which works very well in Europe, I almost thought the traditional atlas was no longer necessary. But after two instances occurred to me during my 2-week driving in Europe (June 2008), I am very glad I had brought this atlas with me as a backup to my GPS.
   
   In the first instance, a scenic mountain pass identified by the GPS was closed midway, I must rely on the atlas to reroute. In the second instance, the entire traffic on our side of motorway stopped completely due to a traffic accident ahead. I had to rely on the atlas, ignoring instructions from GPS, and driving through country roads to reach my destination.
   
   The paper and printing quality of the atlas is first class. It's a worthwhile investment. Take it with you even you have a GPS already!



4. I hoped that the Michelin Italy Atlas was a good paper (pages), but the pages are very fine (fine pages), not good to travel by car (pratical).
   
   Thank you.



5. If you're really going to rent a car in Italy, well, are you REALLY sure you want to rent a car in ITALY?!? Have you heard of the way Italians drive?! Ok, fine, I won't insist in trying to discourage you from having a white-knuckle, hold-on-to-your-seat, head-scratching, stressful vacation, but the least you can do is be equipped with this road Atlas. The suggestions on places to see according to each map are very good.
   Oh, and DO NOT FORGET to request a GPS for your car!!! If the rental company say they don't have it, insist upon getting one.

5 comments about Streetwise Rome Map - Laminated City Street Map of Rome, Italy - with integrated metro map including subway and railway lines, stations.

1. Just returned from eight days of walking in Rome. This is the only map we needed to find our way to everything that was of interest to us. It seems that just about every street and alleyway is listed and shown to scale (which is not the case with the free "tourist" maps). Experienced the joy of just wandering around following our noses to one interesting area after another, always knowing that our trusty "Streetwise Rome" would come to the rescue when we wanted to reach a particular destination. We ventured to the Borghese Gallery, the Vatican, to Trastevere, Palatine Hill, the Colosseum, Piazza del Popolo, Spanish Steps, Via Veneto, the Baths of Diocletian and from and back to the Termini Train Station. Including having the map out in the rain on several occassions, it still looks like new. The best thing is, it is only 4" X 8.5" when folded in your pocket and so easy to flip open to use (unlike so many other maps that you must unfold in several directions).
   The map also has sketches of many of the sights you will be looking for to help you quickly find them. While we only used the Metro once, all the stations are clearly marked. If you want to spend less time folding and unfolding the map and more time enjoying the sights, you may find this product very much to your liking.



2. There's not much you can say about a Map. It Works. I've used this "Streetwise" series in many cities, and I find them very handy. You don't have to worry about the map tearing, or not being able to fold it back after using it. My only regret is that they don't have more cities. How about Istanbul Streetwise?



3. i love these things. use them all the time in the U.S., so i got one for a friend who was going to Italy. she said it was perfect.



4. This map is handy in that it can be slipped into a purse, is laminated, so it won't crease in the wrong places, but the print is very small. For less traveled streets a magnifying glass is a help.



5. This handy maps are great. Be sure to review them before you leave to be sure they cover the area you will be in because they are limited to city center and specific highly traveled areas around city center but these compact maps are durable and have all the detail needed. They also include public transit. I would buy these for all my city travels.