Kim's Review : Rome. . . Past and Present

I first saw this book, when Michael, the owner of the beautiful guest house that we stayed in, in Rome - Pensione Barrett gave us his book to browse through and immediately, I fell in love with the USP of this series.

While R A Staccioli's book - Rome. . . Past and Present - does cover a lot of history and detail, the best part of it are the photographs. So while it has the standard photograph of what the site looks like at present, it aslo has a transparent sheet on top which has details printed on it that superimposes on the picture of the present, to give you an idea of how it could have looked like in the past.

The idea is simply brilliant and I wonder how long it will take to get similar books made for India. Given that we still don't have decent quality representative souvenirs available at our major monuments (magnetic stickers, keyrings, etc), I guess these books will take a long time too and I'm sure a 100 people across the country will jump up and find something in the imagined reconstruction that will "hurt their sentiments"

The monuments covered in this book are mostly from Ancient Rome, except for the last few pages which cover St Peters Basilica and Christian Rome.

There is also a beautiful CD which comes with the book that provides even more rich detailing of the period and the buildings.

Kids of all ages would love this book, for the pictures and the information.

It comes in multiple languages. What I bought in Italy is published by "Vision", but I see that flipkart sells a version by "Frommers" that looks very similar.

Rating : 4 / 5

Kim's Review : Lonely Planet - Italy for the Indian Traveller

As I mentioned in my previous reviews for the DK Eyewitness books, a few years back we stopped buying Lonely Planet guidebooks and completely migrated to the DK Eyewitness series.

However, on a trip to a local bookstore, I saw the "Lonely Planet - Italy for the Indian Traveller" and took a quick look through it. I quite liked what I saw and so I picked up the book.

While the original Lonely Planet books are high on text and full of detail, heavy in weight and small print, this new series is quite different.

The paper is not as glossy as the DK Eyewitness books, but they are much better quality than the thin material of the original LP books. The font is large, there are lots of accompanying pictures and what I really liked about this book is that it covers the highlights and gives you an itinerary for half day, 1 day, 2 days etc. grouping together the main sights based on location.

So this really helped simplify a large step for me in our planning, which is to sit down with googlemaps and figure out how best to group together monuments and sights while traveling to a new location.

This to me was the biggest advantage of this book. The second big advantage for me was the side boxes with tips and facts. Most Indians would love the tips which give you tricks to save money - city cards, discount outlet shopping etc. And a huge plus for a lot of Indians would be the listing of Indian restaurants in the city and the veggie restaurant section. since we scrupulously avoid Indian food and stick to local specialties when traveling out of India, we didn't use these sections at all, but I'm sure it would be a huge boon to a lot of Indian travelers.

The other great thing about this book, is that they have given the website for the restaurant/ outlet/ location, right with the details (rather than at the back of the book) so its easy to look up online as you are reading the book.

They also have a short list of recommended venues to eat at or sleep in, but to cover every budget and this is given at the end of each city rather than at the end of the book (which is what the DK books do), so its easy to plan your visit to each city just by scanning a few pages at a time.

There are sections on highlights written by Indians who have either lived in that location or spent a substantial amount of time there, that are filled with loads of tips.

So this series looks like it will really simplify the planning process for a lot of travelers. It isn't available on amazon yet, but you can find it on flipkart and in most Indian bookstores.

If you are a gung-ho DIY person, you will prefer the DK books, but if you want the pleasure of planning a trip yourself, but yet have someone to help with a basic framework, then you will love this series.

For me, I think I see myself buying both :)

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Kim's Review : DK Eyewitness Italian Phrase Book

This was the first time I actually bought a Language phrase book, before visiting a country, but then this was also the first time we were visiting a country where we planned to walk extensively and wander on our own, but where English isn't widely spoken. (USA, Canada, UK, Lebanon, Kenya etc weren't a problem at all) and when we visited Morocco and Turkey, we had a guide/translator with us to help navigate the non touristy parts of the country.

But, the real reason I was convinced to buy this book was because it came with an audio CD and I believe that, THAT is the most important part of a phrase book. Its one thing to read a word or a phrase, its quite another to hear it spoken with a native accent.

I skimmed through this book. Underlined phrases I thought I would most need : drinking water, where is the restroom, I'm allergic to prawns, which way to . . . , etc.

And then I just played the CD while I was busy with some other work. I listened to it twice, but I honestly believe it really helped. It gave me a feel for the accent, so I did not have as much trouble with mispronunciation as I did when we first arrived in Egypt.

People in Italy are really helpful and when they see that you are trying to speak in Italian, they do their best to help you. In fact, I wandered across a Russian church in Milan, when I was searching for the Church of bones. I asked the lady inside if she knew where that church was, when she didn't she came out and asked a couple of senior gentlemen who were eating their lunch at a table in the garden if they knew where it was. They tried to give me directions, but it was a bit complicated. So they asked me to hold on for a minute, finished their lunch extra quick and accompanied me through a couple of twists and turns until the church came into my view and only then did they wish me Ciao!

I do pick up the basics of a language easily, so my husband was pretty amazed that by day 4, on the train from Rome to Florence, I was having a conversation with 2 Italian couples opposite us on the train who only spoke a bit of English and I was using my extremely basic Italian, but we understood each other almost 90-95%.

That's also because the Italians use a lot of hand gestures when speaking and since body language is just one of the many topics that I've conducted umpteen number of training sessions on, I found it quite easy to catch the gist of a conversation, since I knew a few basic words.

So, if you are planning to do any exploring on your own in Italy, that is outside of the tourist circuit of hotels, airports, train stations and large museums, I would highly recommend picking up a few phrases and this book with its CD is an ideal way to do so.

Its also less than a 100 grams (3 ounces) in weight, so its easy to slip into a bag when walking around and its also small and square, making it easy to slip into a pocket too.

Rating. 4.5 / 5

Kim's Review : DK Eyewitness Top 10 Tuscany

A couple of years ago, we shifted from using Lonely Planet guides to the country we were visiting, to the DK Eyewitness Guides.

What we really love about the DK Eyewitness guides are their colour photographs, 3D type maps of monuments and the lovely details. The details of each monument or place of interest in these books, makes it easier to take a decision on whether to visit it or not.

The glossy pages and pictures and maps, make the books a lovely souvenir of our holiday too. Just skimming through the book brings back beautiful memories of our holiday. So its really practical to use before and after a holiday.

Again, this is a book I bought way back in 2007, when we were planning a group trip to Tuscany with my husbands friends from BITS. In those days, the book was called "Top 10 Tuscany", but later editions are named "Top 10 Florence & Tuscany"

What is really great about this series (Top 10) is that it really helps you prioritise what to see, when the sheer amount of information overwhelms you.

So while the book starts with what are the top 10 highlights of the entire Tuscan region:
1. Uffizi, Florence
2. Duomo Group, Forence
3. Pitti Palce, Florence
4. San Gimignano
5. Campo di Miracoli, Pisa

it also goes into further detail as to the top 10 collections, and top 10 paintings to see at the Uffizi, top 10 vineyards in Chianti, top 10 Etruscan sights in Cortona, top 10 Tuscan artists, top 10 winehouses, villas, churches and spas.

There's also plenty of useful information at the back.

Personally, I used the information in the "DK Eyewitness Top 10 Tuscany" to make notes at the side of my "DK Eyewitness Italy", to help me pay attention to certain things and mark a view "must visits".

There is so much to see and do in Italy and we have so many interests, that we like to be as well prepared as we can before we even leave for our destination. However, while I had an extremely detailed and tight schedule for Rome, once we reached Florence, I just made a general note of the things I wanted to see and do while there, and then let ourselves flow at a more relaxed pace.

The sheer size of the art collections at the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace are overwhelming, so the top 10 guide to these locations really helped ensure that we didn't miss any of the "best" stuff.

Rating : 5 / 5

Kim's Review : DK Eyewitness Florence & Tuscany

A couple of years ago, we shifted from using Lonely Planet guides to the country we were visiting, to the DK Eyewitness Guides.

What we really love about the DK Eyewitness guides are their colour photographs, 3D type maps of monuments and the lovely details. The details of each monument or place of interest in these books, makes it easier to take a decision on whether to visit it or not.

The glossy pages and pictures and maps, make the books a lovely souvenir of our holiday too. Just skimming through the book brings back beautiful memories of our holiday. So its really practical to use before and after a holiday.

I actually bought the "DK Eyewitness Florence & Tuscany" ages ago, so mine is a 2003 edition. That's how long I've been planning a trip to Italy. The food and culture of this region has always fascinated me. However, given that this was our first trip to Italy, we decided to cover Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan (this was for work)

Our initial plan was to spend 3 days in Florence proper and then spend 2 days driving around the Tuscany region. San Gimignano, Pisa, Sienna, Chianti, Lucca and Cortona were the areas we were considering. However, given that we are both art, history, culture and architecture buffs, once we landed in Florence, we found that there was so much that we wanted to see in Florence itself, that we cancelled the driving plan.

However, if you do wish to drive around the region - which a lot of our friends have done and loved and recommended heavily - this is a beautiful book to buy, because it has so much more detail and depth about the area compared to the DK Eyewitness Italy book. However, if you are spending just a couple of days in Florence, you will find enough in the Italy book to keep you busy.

Rating : 4.8 / 5

Kim's Review : DK Eyewitness Italy

A couple of years ago, we shifted from using Lonely Planet guides to the country we were visiting, to the DK Eyewitness Guides.

What we really love about the DK Eyewitness guides are their colour photographs, 3D type maps of monuments and the lovely details. The details of each monument or place of interest in these books, makes it easier to take a decision on whether to visit it or not.

The glossy pages and pictures and maps, make the books a lovely souvenir of our holiday too. Just skimming through the book brings back beautiful memories of our holiday. So its really practical to use before and after a holiday.

The DK Eyewitness Guide to Italy is quite comprehensive with details on every region of Italy. The best part of this particular guidebook was the street by street maps of the heart of the Historic cities. These really helped us get our bearing when we were walking around.

The other feature I really loved was the pictures of the most famous paintings in museums along with a key to the room numbers in which to find them. The pictures often helped us identify or pay closer attention to masterpieces that other tourists just walked past.

The combination of this guide and the free Rick Steeves audio guides really helped us maximise our visits to the bigger museums in Rome and Florence.

There's a lot of helpful information at the back of the book, lists of hotels to stay at and places to eat at. However, personally for stay arrangements, we prefer to use a combination of tripadvisor.com(for reviews, ranking and rating) and booking.com to make the bookings themselves. For eating, we normally stop at a place that's most conveniently located en route our sight seeing path that my nose leads us to or go with a recommendation by a local.But the books also suggests what to eat in which regions.

What we have is the 2012 edition, but the new 2013 edition has come out in September. I always recommend buying the newest edition of guidebooks, because they are the most updated - especially when visiting a new country where you aren't fluent with the local language. If you just want the highlights of what to visit, then you can go ahead and pick up an older edition.


If you are only planning on visiting 1 or 2 cities in Italy, then go for the region/city specific guidebooks.

Rating : 4.8 / 5

Note: Pictures are from dk.co.uk

Kim's Review : Inferno

Brajesh read Dan Brown's "Inferno", when it first came out and felt it was a "tourism advertisement" for Florence, Venice and Istanbul. I read the Inferno as soon as we returned from a 2 week holiday in Italy and absolutely LOVED the book.

It helped refresh my memory of some of the wonderful places that we visited, it brought new insights to some of the masterpieces that we had the privilege of viewing. But this is just the technical and factual parts of the book.

There is a story line in the book, but I do admit, its a little thin. The focus is more on the locale, settings, history, mythology, symbology - mostly centered around Dante Aligheri and his masterpiece -"The Divine Comedy". The Transhumanist Movement, overpopulation, and Genetic Engineering form the rest of the story line.

The book is long and exhausting in its detail, but if you love art and symbology, you will love the book


Rating : 4 / 5

Brajesh's Review : Inferno

If a fan of Dan Brown, myth, mythology, symbology & history gives this book a 3.5 you should know that something isn't quite right. I was let down by Inferno with respect to the Dan Brown genre.

I felt the book actually is a tourist advertisement for Florence, Venice and Istanbul. Not that any of these beautiful locations (and Venice in particular being among the most visited tourist destinations) needed any more publicity.

The basic issue of solving population explosion through a violent intervention is stretched a little too far in the narrative. While Dante and his Divine Comedy holds some amount of mystique and forced me to read more about the poet. Rest of the chase along with Robert Langdon and his mysterious partner through 3 architecturally rich cities doesn't hold much. Would recommend only to tourists who are returning or planing a trip to these 3 cities.


Rating : 3.5 / 5