Frommer's EasyGuide to Rome, Florence and Venice

Highly recommend!!! I purchased several travel guides to prepare for an upcoming trip to Italy, and "Frommer's EasyGuide to Rome, Florence, and Venice" was hands down the BEST! It is so light-weight that I often carried it in my day bag. Most pages are not glossy, so I could take notes without smears. The basics of getting into and getting around in each city are covered well (crucial for Venice). Hotels, restaurants, and attractions are in their own sections, with subsections by neighborhood. I might have preferred to have all the hotels, restaurants, attractions for one neighborhood all together, ditto for the next neighborhood, etc, but this was fine. I didn't use the hotel recs (I had already booked lodging), but the restaurant recs were spot on. The descriptions for the attractions were fantastic, with good details and a touch of humor. The 1-2-3 star rating system lets you easily find a few "off the beaten path" places to visit, such as the Galleria Borghese, which turned out to be the highlight of our trip. The biggest sites, such as the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, even have room-by-room instructions. The interesting side box explanations (such as "A Man and His Dome" about Brunelleschi and the Duomo) and summaries of the various discount cards helped us enjoy things smartly. I also liked the multiple maps of each city (such as different neighborhoods or attractions vs restaurants). The book also includes a few day trips from each of the major cities, including Pompeii, Siena, Pisa, and Verona. Cinque Terre was not covered, but it is best to do online research since the trail conditions often change. Note: I also purchased the full Frommer's Italy book which definitely has less details than the EasyGuide, but since it includes multiple other cities and is made of a completely different material, the full Frommer Italy book weighs significantly more than the EasyGuide - if you are mostly visiting the big 3 +/- their neighbors, choose this EasyGuide!

I was fortunate to travel several times in Italy in my early 20s in the early 1990s. I have not been back since and I am planning to take my family in the near future. Of course, back then I was on a tighter budget and had different priorities of what to see and do. This guide is helping me to fill in 30 years of changes and to prepare to visit new hotels, restaurants and attractions. It provides some excellent recommended itineraries if you're on a limited timeframe. Finally, there's a great (perfectly brief) section on the history of Italy that offers some context on the variety among the country's regions. I highly recommend this guide

It’s smaller than some other travel guides - but not as well written.

All areas we needed.

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