Eyewitness Venice & the Veneto

by Susie Boulton, Christopher Catling, DK Eyewitness Travel

Book Overview

Welcome to this enchanting corner of Italy Whether you want to wander around a magical maze of canals, sample delicious cuisine, ramble through majestic mountains or relive fascinating history, your... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0756661323
• ISBN13: 9780756661328
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Make Eyewitness essential part of your travel fun

DK's Eyewitness Travel Guides are our best travel companion during our tour of Europe. Full of tips, pictures, maps, site info, history, local reference ... every page is not only helpful but beautiful. The layout anf format is very innovative and reader friendly, a ture standing out from any other travel books. It was interesting to see that almost everywhere we went, we saw other people (tourists apparently) holding and checking the same DK book on the street.The coverage is comprehensive and growing year after year, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice ... every city we went have its own Eyewitness serie. We studied them before our trip, consulted them during our trip, and kept them as memo and photo book after our trip. They are simply essential part of the travel fun.I recommend buying indiviual city/area book wherever possible instead of the country book. For example, buy Rome, Florence, and Venice books instead of Eyewitness Italy (unless your destination doesn't have its own Eyewitness). That way you get more detailed and targeted info.

Excellent job - you'll need very little to supplement this

Eyewitness did its usual brilliant job with Venice & Veneto. I bought many guides available to this city but took only two with me: DK Eyewitness and City Secrets (the latter one is an excellent assortment of subjective specialist views, get it if you take your trip seriously).Descriptions of usual high-profile highlights and lesser-known places are clear and accurate, as usual, pictorial plans of churches and streets are very helpful. Accommodation and dining sections are quite superficial, I increasingly find these parts not the strongest bit of Eyewitness guides: they tend to focus on most famous places which rarely represent the best value for money and often are shameless tourist traps. In fact, there is no need to list specific places - what the guide could do is present general guidelines on what to avoid (such as places with menus in five languages) and what to look for (places that don't take credit cards, for example).I found the map of Venice at the end of the book completely sufficient and as easy to use as could be possible in the Venetian maze of streets of multiple names and multiple spellings. Veneto part is not really the best bit of the book - Verona is covered only adequately and Padova receives simple an inadequate treatment. The authors probably had to find a balance between thickness of the book and depth of coverage.I was pleased with coverage of less obvious areas such as Dorsoduro and Canareggio, which are still inexplicably ignored by 90% of visitors (well, maybe they don't have time).All the criticisms above are observations of only minor glitches of what is a very, very strong guide and what probably should be your first choice for a trip to Venice.

EXCELLENT TRAVEL COMPANION

The first time I went to Italy I only had this travel book with me. In fact, I don't think you need any other book when you visit this beautiful city. It's got pictures, maps, description, history, and guide for where to stay, eat, shop - depending on your budget. I spent four days and three nights sightseeing by myself in Venice - and it was great and exciting!! The guide was very helpful in helping navigate through the city's winding streets. Then again, there are signs posted everywhere on how to get to the main sites. The street names were also well posted. In fact, I used Eyewitness' map in the back of this book to plan my trip and visits to sites. It's a very durable book and will hold up in your normal wear 'n' tear during your travels. I went back the second time and only relied on this book. There's no need for any other guide.!!

The perfect travelling companion

This wonderful guide book is crammed with pertinent information, helpful as well as lovely photographs, detailed maps and valuable suggestions. Refering to it constantly while we explored Venice enabled us to gain a deeper understanding of this enchanting city and somehow with all this the book is remarkably light weight. I plan to buy only Eyewitness Travel Guides in the future!

A must-have if you're going to Venice!

Me and my family went to Venice in February and we are very happy to have discovered this book before we left. It has almost all you need to survive in Venice. I'm very glad of all the good restaurants mentioned in the book and though they were a bit hard to find we really got there after all. The map is a bit small but you manage with it. The book also explaines the history of all the buildings and is very teaching. A great guide that you must have with you when you travel there. I noticed that I really wasn't the only one with the same book!