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World Hotels - Rick Steves' Florence and Tuscany 2009
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List Price: $17.95
Our Price: $12.21
Your Save: $ 5.74 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Avalon Travel Publishing
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 914
EAN: 9781598801095
ISBN: 1598801090
Label: Avalon Travel Publishing
Manufacturer: Avalon Travel Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 408
Publication Date: 2008-09-01
Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing
Studio: Avalon Travel Publishing
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Editorial Reviews:
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Rick Steves’ Florence & Tuscany 2009 is the definitive guide to Europe’s cultural capital and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Rick includes expert advice on exploring the endless cultural sights of Florence, from the Bargello, the prison-turned-museum that houses works by Michelangelo and Donatello, to the Duomo, the Gothic cathedral complete with the first Renaissance dome. Rick also covers the quant hill towns of Tuscany, where travelers can enjoy Etruscan art and some of Italy’s finest wine. With self-guided tours of all the major museums and tips on transportation, accommodations, and dining, Rick Steves’ Florence & Tuscany 2009 allows any traveler to experience everything that this remarkable region has to offer.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very helpful and practical book
Comment: Good information with a sense of humor. Well organized and clearly written. Rick Steves knows his stuff.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great walks, food and info
Comment: This is the type of tourist guide we like...lots of walking tours with information on what you are seeing. Excellent information on the major museums to assure you see all the great items, and some lesser items. The food guide was also excellent and included two that will become favorites with us. The humor is fun.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Rick Steves' Florence & Tuscany 2007
Comment: This book is packed with the kind of information that would be nearly impossible to find elsewhere and is essential for anyone wishing to visit Florence and Tuscany, even if they have been there before. The information and tips provided enable a tourist not to be obviously a tourist and to get the most out of the visit. This guide is "A Must".
Mike Sedgwick, Tucson AZ
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great giude for the traveler. Not a museum guidebook.
Comment: This book does not have pretty pictures or in-depth historical information about the sights, but there are plenty of books that do that.
This book's strength is that it makes your trip easy, painless and enjoyable. In my recent trip to Florence (June 26-29) I did not have to wait in line at any of the museums/cathedrals/domes etc. which made the trip much more relaxing and enjoyable.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Buy the Rough Guide instead!
Comment: I came across this in an apartment in Florence, wisely jettisoned by a traveler who had more useful things to carry in their luggage.
Steves' book IS quite good at the very practical nitty gritty of Florence: for example precisely how one collects pre-reserved Uffizi tickets, but his comments on cultural aspects are at best token and often stupid. Not everyone will want, like me, to know all about as much of the art as possible in a book about Florence, but for a travel guide to cover, say, Santa Croce and make reference to only one painting when the place is full of the most glorious and important fresco cycles by major figures is inexcusable. If the information is there, one can ignore it, but if it isn't, you might return to the US (the prime market, I imagine) and realise that you have been within yards of great paintings but the guide book didn't GUIDE you to go and look at them. Instead, in Santa Croce, he refers to admittedly interesting monuments, but fails to refer to the finest (Bruni's), he's only interested in the famous names.
His grasp of the art is very poor and he seems to address his readers as though they are 12 year olds needing asinine jokes to keep their attention. For him medieval painting is a world of never-neverland (his phrase) where the poor painters are struggling desperately to paint realistically but just can't do it! Simone Martine's Uffizi Annunciation is patronised: he can't see its beauty and sees it as a mere stone on the pathway to realism. Mary 'doesn't look too impressed': a good point if he only had the wit to see that perhaps the responsibility of her role is frightening and overwhelming - it's a very moving and human piece, but his approach seems to be,'Why try to elucidate when you can be folksy and jocular'. An early crucifixion is mocked for having Christ's head raised as on a wedge as though this is a pathetic effort at three-dimensionality when it is pretty obvious that the angle would enable viewers to see Christ's face (and suffering) more clearly from ground level and has little to do with aspiring to realism. He also says that the Siena Pinacoteca (a gallery full of wonderful Sienese painting) would tempt him in only if there was a downpour! (I dread to think what nonsense Steves writes about, say, Picasso, if REALISM is the criterion by which all is judged.)
A cardinal sin, for me, is the advice to 'leave this guide face up' in a number of restaurants to gain a reduction. When I travel I like to try to be as little like a tourist as possible, while still obviously being one. I know I stand out like a sore thumb, but Steves seems happy to be as obvious as an amputated leg. And what sort of arrangement leads a guide book writer to 'negotiate' deals for his readers? All very sad, especially as Steves seems to be the Guru of European travel for Americans. Perhaps he suits those, like the previous reviewer who praises Steves for enabling him to 'do' Pisa in 45 minutes and not miss anything, though how he would know he hadn't missed anything is beyond me.
The Rough Guide does everything Steves does well just as effectively, while the cultural stuff, whether great art, architecture etc or jazz clubs, bars, cinemas, clubs - is in another league. If you want a detailed guide to the art and history of the city, see American art historian Eve Borsook's Companion Guide: it has the art, the history and is a really good unfussy read.
And if you want to get a guide to the UK, PLEASE don't buy Steves': I dread to think what rubbish he writes, on the basis of this offering.
Not even worth the one star the site requires me to give!
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