<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A printed version of an online travel journal ....
Review: ... but without the pictures. After I received this mildly entertaining book I realized it was a printed version of material that I read on a website (the author's, I presume) a couple of years ago. It's basically like reading someone's online journal about his trip abroad--we ate here and I had the lasagna and then we had gelato there and I had this flavor and she had that flavor and then we locked ourselves out of our hotel room and we really liked this hotel in this city at this address, etc. The author and his wife seem like nice and amusing people, but this book would probably be enjoyed most by those who are planning their first trip to Italy. I did enjoy very much his snarky but good-natured remarks about Rick Steves and Frances Mayes.
Rating: 
Summary: Wish I Could Join Their Tour!
Review: Finally, a fun book about travel that doesn't wax poetic about the rigors of restoring your villa or make you feel like your should consider a PhD in art or history before you hit the road. Amusing and informative, without being preachy.
This is what Italy is like for most of us-- Italy in two weeks at a time, exploring, making mistakes, eating very well, and shopping for bargains
Rating:
Summary: Not correct
Review: I found this book with many misleading remarks. The author tells the reader to go to McDonald's to use their "American" bathrooms. Not true! In Italy you cannot just drop into McDonalld's to go to the loo. You need to buy something and then get a coin from the cashier to open the door. I had the feeling this book was poorly researched.
After 2 or 3 trips to Italy how can you think you can write a guide book? I got very bored with the author's telling of his jet lag!. Then go to bed upon arrival and get over it!
Rating:
Summary: gelato is his life
Review: I purchased this book because it was mentioned positively on several travel message boards. I found it repetitive (like trying to stretch the material to fill the book) and rather snide, while trying to appear humorous. The remarks about Rick Steves and Frances Mayes were gratuitous and uncalled for.
Rating:
Summary: Things Your Travel Agent Never Told You
Review: This has got to be a fairly unique travel book: it is incredibly enthusiastic (and knowledgeable) about travel throughout many parts of Italy but it doesn't hesitate to view things with a jaundiced eye. The author calls a spade a shovel (to bend a phrase) on things such as fellow tourists, Italian plumbing, pickpockets, driving a rental car in Italy, while also experiencing rapture over a plate of pasta, the frescoes in a church, or the bargains found in a small store.
Definitely NOT for everyone, especially those hopping back on their hurried tour busses. But for the rest of us, this book is like a letter filled with priceless recommendations and travel tips, told with humor, passion, and respect for all the pitfalls, foibles, and incredible pleasures of traveling through Italy.
It also is one of the very few general travelogues available to visit such places as Bellagio, Milan, Bologna Cinque Terre, Cortona, Cortina, Padua, Arezzo, as well as the "usual" stops such as Venice, Florence, and Rome.
If you've ever been to Italy, you'll probably really enjoy this book (and find yourself nodding in agreement). If you haven't been yet, this certainly is as honest a portrait as you will find in print. Totally accurate, fantastic (in all senses of that word), and funny. And the eating suggestions are probably many of the same that a local would offer for a visiting friend.
I will undoubtedly re-read much of it again, in preparation for my own trip to Italy again next year.
Rating:
Summary: An Amusing Travel Journal
Review: This is a fun, funny, first-person narrative. As the author clearly states in the sub-title and text, this is travelogue-- NOT a guidebook (doesn't claim to be-- although it includes helpful information). It DOES report situations most visitors to Italy are likely to encounter. Just as the author did, from his experiences, based on stays in more than twenty cities, towns and villages, over a period of several years. As he says, "Like a love struck youth, I gush excessively about these discoveries and experiences with others, because most of what I have to say isn't in any guidebooks. It's found in daily interactions with people and in piazzas, trattorie, cafes and streets.
And when something similar happens to you, laugh with recognition, and know that as strange as the experience may seem at the time, it's not out of the ordinary.
Even if the experience-- like so much of Italy-- is so extraordinary!" --- Witty, light hearted, P&P radiates a love for Italy, doesn't take himself (or fellow tourists) too seriously. Makes no claims of being a Know-It-All. Humorous, unpretentious, an independent traveler, opting for three star hotels (on a five point system), simple trattorias, utilizing trains and busses more often than taxis or rental cars.
--- In describing the book, the author says, "What follows is a loose (emphasis on "loose") collection of reminiscences from these excursions," various annual visits to Italy beginning in 1994 for a few weeks at a time. Since Amazon doesn't currently show the Table of Contents it's probably helpful for prospective buyers to know that these are the major sections: • The Uncommonly Common Experiences-- chapters on everyday encounters with the customs and vagaries of life in Italy such as driving the Autostrada, "Getting By in a Foreign Tongue...Barely," deciphering signs at churches and elsewhere, and the "Attack of the Teenage Gypsy Pickpockets." • Roads Less Traveled-- accounts of experience in less frequented cities and towns
including Milan, Parma, Cortina, Cortona, Padua, Lucca, Bologna, Arezzo, Cinque Terre, and Chianti • The Big Three-- accounts of Rome, Florence, and Venice • Afterword: Observations and Information: This I Have Learned So Far
Books, Films, Villa and Farm Rentals, Rants and Raves additional excerpts: "The drive to Venice was uneventful...lots of
jockeying for position and testosterone driven encounters. "Yield" is a word that does not seem to translate into Italian..."
---- " We were not prepared for the sight of Polish tour bus,
having come down a narrow one-way street only to discover that further progress along this road was not highly advisable..." ----- "I try to laugh, but believe me, in my jet-lagged stupor, I'm
not in a laughing mood. I want to hide under the table, slink away into the darkness, to rip the table cloth from its place and cover my head. All for about L200 (a dime!). This trip is off to a grand start. I am the Ugly American Tourist, personified." ----
Or consider this excerpt: "Why were we in McDonald's? We certainly weren't there for the food. We were there because they have nice public restrooms. Good enough for Signore McBurglar and Mayor McFormaggio, and good enough for us." ---- I can add that several of the the strategies the author mentions -- such as visiting the Accademia in Florence late in the day to avoid the line and crowds, AND brazenly using public restrooms in cafes and McDonald's (in five Italian cities)-- have worked for us time and time again. And many of the other encounters are also quite true. They may happen to you too. The author acknowledges that different people will have different reactions to the same places and events. I well remember one complainer who loudly stated that he liked the food from the Olive Garden better than the Italian food he'd had during his visit. Go figure! I enjoyed reading this book-- as a lively travel journal. Those expecting a guide book may not. This is no "Fodor's Guide," "Frommer's" or even "Italy for Dummies." It is an informative, breezy travelogue about what happens once you get there. Most of us can learn from his mistakes.
Rating:
Summary: A travel log rather than a guide
Review: This self-published book is composed of apparently previously published web articles on the author's travels to Italy. The structure is not cohesive, jumping around between trips and towns. There are numerous grammatical and typographical errors throughout. The continual mention of each meal consumed was tedious and boring, as no real restaurant review was given, just a mention such as "I ordered the Pizza Margherita; she ordered the arugala pizza". I wouldn't consider it a guide but a personal trip report, something you listen to at a dinner party, but not something worth paying money to read about.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo-- The Unvarnished, Hilarious Truth
Review: You gotta love this book. Unadulterated travel tales, filled with information, humor, facts, and telling personal reports. If you can't be an expatriate in Italy-- and very few of us can-- then your alternative will be the ten day to two week vacation. And you can make some of the author's same mistakes-- and avoid some of the others.
The bibliography is very helpful, and the filmography is great. Two thumbs, way up!
<< 1 >>
|
