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Travel
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Rick Steves' Florence and Tuscany 2008 (Rick Steves)
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Sale Price: $12.21
List Price: $17.95
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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, but most travelers don't want to carry a library with them so they need a book that covers the practical and the cultural at least competently.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! We just returned from a tour to Florence and Tuscany region, and feel this book is inadequate for the Tuscany region in general. It was very helpful for Florence, but many of the cities we visited were not even listed in the book. Therefore, I would consider this mainly a Tuscany guide book.We lived by this book for 4 days around Florence. The restaurants Rick suggests were really great (we tried 6 places), map is detailed, museum guides are adequately informative. He was wrong on a couple of museum prices - sometimes by 50%. I'm not sure if they are anticipating fee decrease in 2008 (we were just there last week). There are other guidebooks with color pictures and more detailed descriptions of sights - might also want to have those if you are not going to do a guided or audio tour. His suggestions on side trips to the hill towns were great. We went to Siena, Pisa, San Gimignano and Volterra by car. We are really glad to have had this book. Definitely recommend and will definitely buy Rick Steves books for our future travels.I spent 9 days this spring in Florence and Tuscany & found this book to be absolutely wonderful--full of great tips to get the most of your trip. Obviously, a lot of other people found him useful too, as everywhere we went, we saw people toting his book around! My German sister-in-law found it comical!I am so glad that my friend introduced me to Rick Steves! I now own 3 of his books and am actually shopping for a couple more to use in the coming year!
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