The Real Guide

by Mark Whatmore and Real Guides

Virgin Pocket Guides keep well away from those cliched tourist traps and detail more of what is hip and happening. A team of local writers have researched and compiled over 1,000 of the top places in town: the best restaurants, bars, clubs and club nights, shops, hotels, and the sights really worth seeing. Clear design and well-organized listings give visitors instant access to information and each entry is referenced to a set of city maps in the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0137707444
• ISBN13: 9780137707447
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

opinion

I really don't care for Lonely Planet's Italy Guide so I purchased this guide. The maps are good and the floor plans of important buildings are very helpful.

La Serenissima

Over the past few weeks I think I have read all the guide books on Venice there are on the market (a very crowded market), and this one leads the pack.It is not for the person looking for pretty pictures, that is true. But it is the most comprehensive, most insightful, and ultimately most helpful.The Time Out Guide is also very good, especially its listings section, some interesting background, terrific colour maps (complete with street index), and nice pics and Lonely Planet looks more than adequate, but it is Rough Guide I am most impressed with. That is because of the depth of information on many places. There are really clear black & white maps of the layouts of things like the Basilica and Doge's Palace, and sestiere maps. I decided this is the guide I want to read at night or in a quiet corner when actually visiting places.

Really 4.5

Rough Guide definitely gets 5 stars for thoroughness. From cover to cover there is more information about Venice than I would have thought possible, or maybe even desirable!Especially when it comes to information on neighborhoods, museums, scuole and the like, this is the best book of it's kind. I kept it in hand walking through the Accademia; I think they actually gave background information on every single painting in the place. The sections on the Doge's Palace and the Basilica are just staggering. Every tiny little campo, every plaque, every statue is covered with a thoroughness bordering on [tedium].Unfortunately, this is also the Rough Guide's biggest drawback. The guide covers everything from the sublime to the mundane, and sorting through it all (and with no pictures!!?!?!) sometimes takes some effort. With a prose style more reminiscent of Henry James than Rolling Stone, I thought it seemed tedious at times.Having said all that, the restaurant recommendations were dead-on, and they were forward-looking enough to attempt lira to Euro price estimations.Recommended, but you may want to pick up something more entertaining for the flight over.

Superb! ...Move over, Lonely Planet!

Wow! Just got back from Venice, where we used this guide to find our pensione, restaurants (NO tourist ones), gelato, churches, the best tartuffi (chocolate truffles) in the world, and of course museums, attractions, and scuolas. We never found anything to disagree with on their reviews, although they called our pensione "cheerless" despite the sunny south exposures that were a delight. Best of all, the maps are cross-referenced to the text, so when reader looks up a restaurant review, the map location is noted and easily found (other guide books are infuriatingly lax in this simple and useful method). Absolutely perfect!

Not bad as Rough Guides go

This book has a succinct introduction to San Fran. I found it an excellent guide to the city. The "contexts" at the back put it all into perspective, too. The dim sum recommendations were good too!