Vacations Books

What I like best about the Rough Guides is that they give critical reviews. They will point out the tourist traps and will give negative reviews. I find that Frommer's and Fodor's rarely point out the negatives to a particular hotel or site. The rough guide is very critical and is a great balance to these other guides. I would balance your trip to Italy with a Fodors (or Frommers) book because the maps and illustrations are often better and there are more higher-end hotels listed.
This book will help you decide where is best to spend your vacation in Italy. There are clear critical descriptions of all the regions and great general info on getting around in Italy.

If you aren't interested in "roughing" it and staying in lower priced hotels. The guides are still very useful in rating attractions, and areas in which to stay... but you will need another book to look at more moderate and luxury hotels.

I would definitely read this book before going to Italy.

I lived in Italy from August 2003 to August 2004 and before leaving I bought this guidebook. I would have been better off with no guidebook at all. The information in Rough Guide Italy (e.g., prices for hostels, opening/closing times for attractions, etc.) was consistently wrong to the point that I questioned whether anyone had attempted to verify what was printed in the last ten years. Rough Guide, in an attempt to differentiate itself from Lets Go and Lonely Planet, spends a lot of time on "off the beaten track" areas. This is generally good but it seems that in some cases cities do no merit the praise heaped upon them (i.e., Rough Guide does this solely in order to offer something different). Anyway, the point is that I had the opportunity to use Rough Guide countless times over the year. The historical information is not bad but its practical value is seriously lacking. Rough Guide, if you're listening it would be in your best interest to update your stuff!

I'd like to offer another review from just the one out here - although I have not used Rough Guide to Italy, I just got back from Switzerland where I couldn't have survived with out my Rough Guide!

It was comprehensive (the smallest of towns we went through had information in the guide), provided detailed city maps (which we could do our own tours), and offered good info on hotels and meals. Granted we are not student backpackers and looked for a guide that was fit to our needs - that is what Rough Guide to Switzerland did for us and will be doing for us through Italy!

I just came back from a 2 week trip to Italy, my first time going there. I have used guides such as LonelyPlanet and Let's Go before, but I selected RoughGuide for this trip because I have heard a lot of good things about the series and as it was one of the most recently published guides for Italy, I was hoping it will have the most updated information.

First of all, the good things about the guide:
1. It does contain a lot of practical information about big and small cities in Italy, and it was immensely useful during my trip.
2. A lot of historical and insightful details for museums and art galleries that went beyond the basics, that I found very useful

However, the good is not enough to overcome the shortcomings of the guide, and that is why I think there must be a better guide for Italy than this and I encourage travelers to seek them out. Some of the things in the guide that really bothered me included:

1. Listing recommended bars and cafes without marking them on the provided map. Without a street index for any map, I was unable to find the places they recommended unless I spend 20 minutes looking at every single street name on the page. As streets in places like Rome, Florence and Venice are very small, this was a very difficult task. I sometimes came to the conclusion that the street for the bar listing was not even in the map provided. Contact information for bars and cafes were not provided, so it was not even possible to call them to ask for directions.

2. No layout plan/map for large museums and galleries. When I came to places like the Vatican, the Roman Forums and the Uffizi, I found it difficult to locate important "sights" with only word directions (i.e. on the right of the second altar...... or on the left side of that first pile of rubble.....) This is especially a problem when I sometimes found myself coming in from a different entrance than the one the writers used. It would have been a lot simpler if they included a map of the museum itself. This was especially difficult in the Uffizi in Florence. They would describe a painting as being in room 6, but room numbers are not displayed for every room in the Uffizi. The rooms are also not clearly shaped and defined, and I did not even realize I had crossed four rooms until I looked at my friend's guide to see I was no longer in room 3, but in room 7.

3. Not really a guide for roughing it. For Siena, the category of inexpensive dining means a meal for less than Euro 20. This is actually quite expensive for a backpacker on a budget.

4. Not very thorough directions. In Siena, information is given for how to get to the train station from the city centre, but no information is given for getting back to the train station (the bus drop off and pick off points are in different parts of the city). To get from Naples to Pompeii, they list taking the train to Torre Annuziata and then switching to another line, but you save yourself a lot of trouble if you just take train to Sorrento.

5. Lack of low budget accommodation listings. There are a lot of listings for hotels, but there is hardly enough listings of hostels. Even when there are listings, the comments they offer are not very helpful to help me decide whether it is a hostel that is worth using.

All in all, this guide did help me a lot. At the same time, I am quite certain I would have been able to find the same help in another guide to Italy, that would have offered better directions and descriptions of famous sights. Perhaps this is a good guide if you are already quite familiar with Italy, because it does offer information for smaller towns and out of the way places. However, for a first time backpacker to the country who was interested in seeing the big and medium-sized sights, I found it lacking a lot of information that would have been helpful.

What's rough about this guide book? Oh, the information! I don't know who this book is written for, because as a regular backpacker, I find it completely useless. Two major problems are the lack of sufficient information about hostels (there's plenty of hotels listed, though), and there's no information considering the costs of travelling around Italy.

Unless you are travelling with a suitcase full of money, don't buy this one.

Oh: I tried to rate this book as "-", but it wasn't possible. One star given is too much.

Although this was a fast read, it did not hold my attention. The story line and characters were boring and I could not wait to be done with the book.

An easy beach read is what this book appears to be from it's cover. And an easy beach read it is.

This book is just something nice to pick up if your brain is fried from finishing some heavy psychological thriller or biography. There are no frills, no major plot twists, and the story is very simple to follow. The chapters are short and varied, and the story is told in the past and present, through a number of different character's perspectives.

The main 3 characters in the book is group of women on a 'hen week' or a week-long bachelorette party in Turkey. Rachel, the non-confrontational bride, is often in the middle of situations she doesn't want to be in. She spends the holiday feebly trying to battle a group of snippy french women and her soon-to-be mother-in-law.

Yaslyn is a model close to Rachel's age, who is on the brink of being proposed to, but isn't sure she wants to be tied down. Her holiday has her torn between the life she used to live, and the strange changes she is being faced with.

Carrie-Ann is the oldest woman, recently divorced, who spends her trip moping and trying to avoid the attention of some undesirable men.

Thrown into all of this is a million subplots, including a horny tennis instructor, a couple on the brink of separation, and a forlorn chess tutor all trying to sort out their feelings for various people staying at the Turkey resort.

Manby does a good job of keeping the story moving, although the seven sunny days are quite stretched out! This wouldn't be a bad movie really, save for a GLARING oversight by the author on a condition known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. All in all a light, frothy read.

Her two best friends Carrie Ann Murphy and Yaslyn Stimpson take engaged Rachel Buckley on a final fling before she says I do. The trio goes exotic Club Aegee in Bodrin, Turkey seeking males to pamper them for a week. Her buddies make sure that Carrie, a senior manager at Office Angels, is in a festive mood from the start when they slip a vibrator into her luggage only to have customs see it.

At the resort, Rachel realizes her pals have issues. Yaslyn fears commitment though her boyfriend back home wants for them to move to the next level in their relationship. Carrie Ann has just had her divorce legalized and so is down on marriage and men except as disposable boy toys. As the trio shares a room for partying and all night binges the vast chasm on male relationships surface in an ugly manner; Rachel wonders whether adding a husband means subtracting her two best friends.

Much more a relationship drama especially between the three friends than a chick lit tale though the narration is from the latter 101, fans will enjoy the escapades and deep look at the complexities of human interaction. The three females are a delightful fully developed characters and the support cast brings out the best and as often the worst in each of them. Though the subplots can become overwhelming (flow charting will not help) that just emphasizes the baggage people bring to multifaceted interactivities.

Harriet Klausner

While the groom is off with his mates for a stag weekend, three gal pals (bride-to-be Rachel, commitment-phobe supermodel Yaslyn, and newly divorced Carrie Ann) head to the sunny shores of a Turkish resort for a relaxing "hen" week. While there, they run into a motley crew of guests and resort employees, as they attempt to make Rachel's last week of singledom memorable. The resort is full of clichéd characters - the tennis instructor/resort lothario, the clingy nerd, cheerleader tour guides, and lipstick lesbians that like to put on a show.

The opening scene is hysterical - her friends have put something in her luggage which sets off the security. Unfortunately, that is really the only funny scene; the rest of the book just meanders along. While in Turkey, the girls seem to keep getting stuck with another Brit couple - Marcus and Sally, who are on the verge of divorce. Sally is such a pill, that I found it hard to understand why Marcus would want to stay with such a shrew.

Each woman has a problem that needs resolution - Rachel hates confrontation, and the mother-in-law from hell runs all over her. Carrie Ann is trying to lie under the radar, but every inappropriate male seems to have latched onto her, while her only solace is playing chess with brainy Frenchman, Axel. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Yaslyn's problem, what with all the barfing - despite having a man pining for her back home and ready to make a commitment, she laps up all the male attention she receives, including the tennis instructor, Gilles.

There really was not a lot offered in the book to hold my attention. Perhaps there were too many characters; perhaps none of the "problems" were serious enough to capture my attention... I was pretty disappointed with this after the great cover description. All in all - I think it was a pretty forgettable novel.

Three gal pals (bride-to-be Rachel, commitment-phobe supermodel Yaslyn, and newly divorced Carrie Ann) head to the sunny shores of a Turkish resort for a relaxing "hen" week. While there, they run into a motley crew of guests and resort employees, as they attempt to make Rachel's last week of singledom memorable. The resort is full of clichéd characters - the tennis instructor/resort lothario, the clingy nerd, cheerleader tour guides, and of course lipstick lesbians that like to put on a show.

The opening scene is hysterical - her friends have put something in her luggage which sets off the security. Unfortunately, that is really the only funny scene; the rest of the book just meanders along. While in Turkey, the girls seem to keep getting stuck with another Brit couple - Marcus and Sally, who are on the verge of divorce. Sally is such a pill, that I found it hard to understand why Marcus would want to stay with such a shrew.

Each woman has a problem that needs resolution - Rachel hates confrontation, and the mother-in-law from hell runs all over her. Carrie Ann is trying to lie under the radar, but every inappropriate male seems to have latched onto her, while her only solace is playing chess with brainy Frenchman, Axel. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out Yaslyn's problem, what with all the barfing - despite having a man pining for her back home and ready to make a commitment, she laps up all the male attention she receives, including the tennis instructor, Gilles.

There really was not a lot offered in the book to hold my attention. Perhaps there were too many characters; perhaps none of the "problems" were serious enough to capture your attention... I was pretty disappointed with this after the great cover description. All in all - I think that this was a pretty forgettable novel.

I purchased this book and a few other pet travel guides at the same time. I ended up returning this book. The wording on the pages resemble a kidnapper's ransom note. There are better ones out there.

Lots of other pet travel books have lists of hotels and motels that accept pets, but without much description. I hoped this book would provide narrative descriptions of great vacations possibilities with my dog, but, apart from a section on "Dog Camps", was only another (and not very good) listing of accommodations that accept dogs. For that, the AAA Book is better. How about a book that features the BEST places that cater to dogs and their owners (e.g. with special pet services, doggy 'day care', dog runs) rather than just tolerate them. I'd love a book with 50 or 100 great places that cater, with descriptions and reviews, rather than another list of places that accept dogs. Besides this, its just poorly printed. Save your money.

Great Vacations For You & Your Dog, USA 2003-04 is a straightforward, no-nonsense list of dog-friendly vacation accommodations for all 50 States, and for canine accompanied travelers on all budget levels. Pages and pages of canine-hospitable locations are listed by city while providing addresses, phone numbers, very brief descriptions of the facilities, fees and more. From Dog Camps, Family Camps, Resorts, Ranches, Cabins, Hotels, Inns, Lodges, and Bed & Breakfast accomodations, Great Vacations For You & Your Dog, USA 2003-04 is a practical and very enthusiastically recommended resource for dog owners traveling to anywhere in the country for business or pleasure.

We used this book as our primary resource while I was pregnant with our first child in 1999. We really relied on the restaurant reviews, with a few exceptions, they were right on. The recommendations from the two authors for activities were really helpful for me, as I was limited because of pregnancy and needed to find the right level activity to fit my condition. I am surprised others did not find this book helpful. Perhaps it is good for those traveling with constraints, like kids or pregnancy.

Because I live in Hawaii and travel the islands a lot, I check amazon.com frequently and have built up quite a library on the islands. This book, as a reviewer said, does read like one author spent a day on the north shore gathering free handouts, PR brochures, menus, etc. while the other did the same on the south shore. Then they tried to write a guidebook.But there is a lot of material in it even if it is missing depth of knowledge about Kauai and guidance from personal experience. The other reviewers who live in Hawaii are on target otherwise.

On a recent trip to the islands we bought this as it was the only guidebook for Kauai in our book store. When we got to Kauai we found the information to be superficial and not up to date. While there we bought other books-one by Kathy Morey, another by Robert Smith, etc. that were very informative, so we got by. Don't buy this guidebook...a waste of money!

When I started looking for a place in the sun I found this book very helpful. It provides a bird's eye view of life and work in the two countries of the Iberian Peninsula. It is the kind of book to start with before you make a decision and then start focusing on the country of your choice. It is concise and to the point.

In contrast to typical travel guides, Mr. Parker's book offers a wealth of valuable information about the mundane, often-overlooked aspects of building a life on the Iberian Peninsula. What may not be clear from the title, however, is that the book is almost exclusively directed at citizens of the EU (ie. UK and Ireland) who wish for a variety of reasons to move to Spain or Portugal. On specific points of how to obtain permits and visas, the book will seem painfully vague to any non-EU citizen, with Mr. Parker's view painfully slanted toward the English Pensioner or long-term vacationer. In short, if you are a non-EU citizen interested in living on the Iberian Peninsula but will not be content to sequester yourself in an enclave of sunburned, English-speaking Britons along the Costa del Sol, you may want to keep shopping.

Jonathan Packer's guide LIVE AND WORK IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL is a book to steer clear of for those facing the challenge of moving to Spain. The book suffers from numerous problems.

LIVE AND WORK is first of all quite out of date. Although it was last updated in 1998, this update didn't change much from the original 1991 edition. As Spain is more and more integrated into the European Union, and the Euro is now the official currency, this guide's advice is often too old to be useful.

The layout of LIVE AND WORK makes the guide vexing to read. The text is often so compacted that it is difficult to see where one section ends and another begins. There are spelling mistakes here and there, and typesetting errors. The book also contains advertisements, which may disappoint those looking for independent advice.

Finally, this book is written for Britons who are thinking about moving to Spain and Portugal, for an American to learn about Spain and Portugal through this book, first one would have to be familiar with life in Britain.

If moving to Spain, I would suggest acquiring CULTURE SHOCK: SPAIN instead of this guide. It doesn't have nearly as many details, but it gives you an overview of the culture. One could augment that book with other resources that are up-to-date. All in all, however, it is best to avoid LIVE AND WORK IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

I've tried to read this twice; the second time I got up to about a dozen pages, and found myself simply glomming on to the three or four 'errors' per page in the book.

Knowing and cherishing the characters as well as I do, it galled me to hear things M Pamplemousse would never say, do things that would never happen, and generally acting like a (should I say it?) American.

On top of having no relation to earlier M Pamplemousse books, all of which I love, this has no humor in it at all, unless children falling off a stage while in a play is hilarious.

Do not try reading this at home, or anywhere else. Certainly do not spend money for it. It was surely written by an overworked intern that never read any books in the series, and edited by some American intern that 'improved' it by making it readable by the average American (read "The Illiterate American")

Of course this review is based on a small percentage of the book; I'll try to read more, and if I find that Mr Bond has awakened from his coma to take up the writing himself, I will apologize - but do not bother waiting for it.

I'm a huge fan of Pamplemousse and Pommes Frittes, but this book reads as if written by a committee of ghost writers trying to keep the franchise going. All the usual elements are here, but feel pasted on and contrived...the "derrieres and one doudoune" scene mentioned in another review is the perfect example. It's a bit creepy because in all the other books M. P. is the innocent victim of surprise risque encounters, not the perpetrator bordering on a dirty old man. Worst of all, the plot is boring...perhaps it's not fair for me to review since I stopped halfway through. If you're a huge fan, give it a try, since it's part of the series and you might disagree with me. But I'd discourage anyone from starting here...you probably won't pick up the rest, which would be a shame.

Monsieur Henri Leclercq, Director of Le Guide has suggested that Monsieur and Madame Pamplemousse, accompanied by Pommes Frites, might well enjoy a vacation on the Cote d'Azure in Southern France. Of course while there, he is also quite sure that Pamplemousse would not mind picking up an object d'art, that Madame Leclercq's Uncle Caputo is having delivered by a contact at a performance by female pupils of a Russian school, in a production of West Side Story, and testing some new technology that Le Guide has acquired. Unfortunately, the contact never contacts the good Monsieur Pamplemousse, Trigaux, develops a number of derrieres and one doudoune in the photographic department at Le Guide, Pommes Frites protects his master from the new technology, and Pamplemousse finds himself in a coffin, courtesy of the Russian Mafya.

The title of this book sounds like a great children's book about Mackinac Island, which my preschoolers have visited often but it definately did NOT live up to it's title. The story was very odd, including the boat captain asking the family to ride a different boat on their return trip, the dog throwing up at the hotel's front door, a reference to horse poop, the young boy & dog knocking over an elderly woman, a cave filled with old human bones, a child climbing over a guard rail, etc. Nothing was very amusing, or anything you want read to children. My kids did enjoy the illustrations, but a MUCH better choice is "Mac's Mackinac Island Adventure".

Our kids just loved this book!! It reminded our family of some past friends and events in our lives and has made great opportunities to share this book with others. If you want to find out about these "real as life" characters, read this book!!! You won't be disappointed...YOU HAVE MY GUARANTEE!

I didn't like the bad grammar contained in the children's dialogue. As for coverage of the highlights of Mackinac Island, it was quite good.

Yikes! I left this book on the counter after I received it without looking through it and my 7year old picked it up and showed me all the dirty words she found in it! The illustrations have more profanity and sexually explicit names than an episode of the Sopranos. I bought this book after The Today Show recommended it for a good summer beach read, but obviously not if you are on vacation with your kids!!! It is supposed to be a funny book but it is just trashy and not a bit funny.

I picked this up in a bookstore and happened upon one of the funniest stories I've ever read. I think because the bookstore was rather swanky and the stories & profanity were so outrageous, I found myself in fits of uncontrollable laughter. I had to buy it - even paid full price for it! Not every story had me rolling, but I was totally entertained. Definitely for adults.

Hoosiers beware! I bought this book and then realized that it doesn't have a section on what to do in Indiana. I live in Indiana, and thought (rightly so, of course) that it is located along one of the Great Lakes, and therefore would rate a mention. What were the author's thinking? That's like writing a tour guide to Europe and leaving Italy out. You'd feel robbed, right?

That said, I do look into the book when we plan to travel to Illinois, BUT what a misleading title! Now I'm going to try some other guide like Fodor's or Frommer's - people who really understand geography... and don't try to mislead people with their titles! ARGH!

I've lived in the Chicago area for 20 years, and there were a few things in here that I didn't know about, such as the American Girls Shop/ play in Chicago. But by and large, most of the Chicago area stuff I knew about. Where it really comes in handy is that many of the areas featured are within a few hours drive. Great if you're going to visit family and need something for the kids. We found all kinds of neat stuff about one of our favorite vacation spots in Door County, Wisconsin that we otherwise would have missed. One area that could stand to be improved - they have Chicago, then Northwestern Illinois (Galena etc). What about the 'burbs? There's a few little things here and there, but otherwise the whole Chicagoland area outside of the city limits is missed. I would also like to see more on restaurants. Chicago has a TON of restaurants,including the upscale but very cool Chicago Firehouse (actually built into a firehouse, complete with pole - saw Mayor Daley there!) and there are only 7 mentioned. All in all though, a good buy, and as I said, would make a great gift for a family with kids new to the area.

This is a good reference, similar to those publications that describe colleges and universities or graduate programs. It gives you the basics of cooking schools (recreational and professional) in each state... cost of tuition, length program, number of students etc. It is a good guide for anyone who wants to know what kind of programs are out there.

This Book did not convey what cooking school reallyis like. i dont recommend it.