5 comments about St Petersburg (Eyewitness Travel Guide).

1. This book gives ou a nice overview of the region, and incredible specific tips for visiting St. Petersburg.



2. Eyewitness Travel Guides once again lives up to its motto: "The guides that show you what others only tell you." While other guides are long on talk about St. Petersburg, this guide adds hundreds of photos, detailed illustrations, diagrams, maps, and time-lines to bring the city and its surrounding areas to life. Paging through it is like vacationing in St. Petersburg without the cost of going there. Fortunately, the book also includes what you need to know and how to manage when you are there.



3. Great book. Glossy Paper and small enuf to carry along. Recommend DK books



4. I purchased this guide because it looked to be a good value and fairly current. I have been delighted with how useful this guide turned out to be, with particular emphasis on finding good restaurants. The restaurants we tried were just as described.
   
   St. Petersburg is not so big that you need to carefully plan your time as you would in London or Rome, for example, and this guide strikes a good balance between too much detail and not enough to get by on. The one catch is that you'll need some additional info on speaking Russian if you are not traveling with a tour group.



5. The book helped me a lot on my visit to St. Petersburg as I don't know Russian. The maps have the street names in English and Cyrillic Also the street index. There is also a metro map with stations written in both languages. The metro map and phrase book at the end - should be written in bigger letters. The book is very colorful and helps you to identify the sights and find your way.
   I didn't read all the history section which seems very detailed but for a traveler - there should be a summery page of the important events and people who had an impact on St. Petersburg's history and Architecture.
   Information that I found lacking or should be improved (Only from my experience in the city and I didn't see or visit all the sites)
   1.Yosupuv Palace - no information about the beautiful interior and collections (p. 120) A gallery or hall guide should be added.
   2. There are three guided walks ( P. 133-139) but a very important one "Dostoevsky walk" ("Crime and Punishment") around the area of Sennaya Ploshchad is missing . there is a small map on p.115 with "sights at glance" without the buldings were Dostoevsky lived. There is a mention of him on page 123 with limited information.
   A map, the walk and more information linking the area to the relevant books (" Crime & Punishment"," The Gambler" etc.) must be added.
   3. Traskoe Selo or Pushkin (P.152-155) - no mention of the impressive Holocaust "Formula of Grief " also not on the map on page 155.

No comments about Top 50 Ski and Snowboard Resorts in Europe 2008-2009 (Top 50 Ski & Snowboard Resorts in Europe).

5 comments about The Alps of Tuscany : Selected hikes in the Apuane Alps, the Cinque Terre and Portofino.

1. If you are planning a trip to northern Tuscany (Florence, Pisa, etc.) and want to do some hiking, you must check out this book! It is a goldmine of information on hikes in the Tuscan Alps -- all carefully described and ranked by difficulty, scenic beauty, elevation gain and duration, etc.-- as well as recommendations for places to eat and sleep at the end of your tiring day. I will update this review after putting the book to the test in May 2000.



2. This guide gives detailed information about 31 hikes in Italy's Liguria region and the Apuane Alps of Tuscany. As an example of its useful detail, it rates the difficulty of each hike as Easy (up to 8 km, up to 500 m elevation gain) Moderate (up to 10 km, up to 800 m elevation gain) Strenuous (up to 14 km, up to 1200 m elevation gain) and Very Strenuous (over 14 km, over 1200 m elevation gain).

   Five of the hikes are more strenuous than the climb from Phantom Ranch, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, to Grand Canyon Village, at the South Rim. And there are just two easy hikes.




3. This book, which I received as a present in anticipation of a trek to Italy, is fantastic. It is very interesting and well written with lots of good information. I agree with the above reviews; I especially love the menu recommendations for various spots and the guide to Italian behavoir. My one complaint is that it does not have much information for extended (multi-day) hikes, and while it has useful information on trains, the book as a whole is geared towards those traveling by car. All in all a delightful book, that is a fun read even if you aren't actually going hiking.



4. I just returned from a trip to the Apuan Alps, where I put this book to the test, and it was quite useful. The hikes are very well described and are very accurate in terms of the terrain and the time and distance. I also agree with their rankings of the various hikes in terms of difficulty and the overall experience. However, this book should be used as a "starting point" coupled with detailed road maps and trail maps, as the directions to the trailheads (and on the trails themselves) can be a bit vague at points. Still, it was an excellent tool that made for a great hiking experience.



5. The level of detail in this guidebook is astonishing. I have walked and climbed this area for 23 years but still found new ideas. I can confirm the accuracy of the descriptions from my experience of many of the routes followed in whole or in part. In this area it is essential to use detailed maps to supplement the route description if only to find starting and finishing points. The maps recommended within this guide are not wholly adequate for the purpose, and maps of the series "Edizioni Multigraphic, 1:25 000" are really indispensable.

No comments about Michelin Ile-de-France: Paris & Surrounding Areas (Michelin Maps).

2 comments about Turkish Cooking: A Culinary Journey through Turkey.

1. It's a good book it brings me back to some great family recipes from my Nana. I wish it had more pictures! Its one forth tour of turkey and three forth recipes.



2. I am about to send the book back, for the following reasons : - a large part of the book is not concerned with food, but is an account of the author's travels. I think the presentation of the book should have made this clear. - Many recipes rely on meat substitutes. It has always struck me as the sign of a sad lack of imagination when vegetarian food tries to mimick meat-based cooking. It is particularly regrettable when one writes about Turkish cuisine, which has some of the most delicious NATURALLY vegetarian dishes.

5 comments about Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City.

1. As with some of the other reviewers, I am glad I read this AFTER I visited Prague. It is best not read cover to cover, but use the index to read about the things you want to learn more about. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed by personal names and places in a language most of us are unaccustomed to. Don't lie to me & tell me you will remember it all! (smile). (Unless you are an expert in Slavic languages).



2. I have just returned from my first trip Prague and Ostrava. The history of the region is a bit confusing to us who are not familiar with this part of the world. This is an important part of the world, after all the genesis of the First World War is connected to the Bohemian Prince who was also a successor to the Habsburg throne.

   Professor Demetz provides a comprehensive background to the history of the country, the intrigues and policitical fights that went on this part of the world. He provides a lively discussion of a serious subject. Prague went through a great number of battles and the people here were well involved with many events that rocked the European politics and religion.

   Demetz is from Prague where he grew up and was a victim of anti-semitic tide that swept across Europe. This makes his story so human. This is not a dispassionate history book. I recommend this book to you, if are interested to know a bit more about the Czech republic and its people.




3. Professor Demetz is especially strong in exploring the religious history of the city. I wondered how he could be so erudite in explaining both the Hussite revolt against Catholicism and Rabbi Loew's conflict with the Jewish establishment. He explained in his beautiful, elegiac afterword that his father's family was Christian; his mother's, Jewish. He spent time in a Nazi labor camp for half-Jews. My suggestion would be to read the afterword first. The bibliography is also very helpful, with rather blunt appraisals of cited works.



4. As other reviewers have noted, this book is difficult to peg and, sometimes, to follow. As a (sort of) history book written by a literature professor, this is not surprising. The subtitle, "Scenes from the Life", is apt; while there are plenty of anecdotal gems, it doesn't provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of the city's history nor put it into a larger context. The strongest parts are those describing the occasional cooperations, but more frequent tensions, between Prague's Germans, Czechs, and Jews. Often billed as a tourist's introduction to the city, Demetz spends long sections on some pretty arcane literary history without really telling the layperson why he should care. There is an irony here too, since the last section is a 10-page, somewhat self-indulgent, gripe about how the city has been ruined, largely by tourists. If you are planning a trip to Prague and want to know more about the city, I think you can do better.



5. This book by Peter Demetz tells a real story of the good and bad in a people who are struggling for survival. His work provides a realistic account of what happenned to him,or more specifically a young persons survival or existance during this dark hour in Czech history and so called civilized society.i agree with the previous review,read the forward again
   after you finishing reading the book.

1 comments about Frommer's Seville, Granada & the Best of Andalusia (Frommer's Complete).

1. This book follows the familiar format of Frommer's publications. Graphics make for easy, "glanceable" readability. The authors get right to the point about what is worthwhile, and what is over-rated. However, I could not give a higher rating to this book. My impression is that this is a new edition of guide material that was first developed some years ago. It needs to be freshened up more. For example, for Seville, the authors note that all train service is "now centralized into the Estación Santa Justa." As I discovered from my own research, this modern train station was completed in 1991. Yet, not one of the maps provided of Seville give any indication of the location of this 16-year-old major train station. The maps show two other train stations (Estacion de Cadiz and Estacion de Cordoba), and this makes me wonder whether the publisher was simply using a very outdated map of Seville. Information on hotels gives scant details about the availability of internet connections. In some cases, the listing indicates "dataport." Does that mean dial-up access? In the year 2007, most travelers who need internet access require some form of high-speed internet access. Overall, I would not say that this guide is quite up to the usual Frommer standards.

1 comments about The Xenophobe's Guide to the Russians.

1. delivered on time and quick unlike a lot of other things I've had to buy for classes

5 comments about Dreaming Venice.

1. The most beautiful little book on Venice I have seen...
   The pictures are exquisitely taken. The composition of the pictures,
   perfect and the gold and rose colours of the city are gorgeous.
   
   If you want to see Venice as it perhaps once was, and perhaps in some
   areas still is, then this is the book to get.
   
   The first sentence in the book sums it up... 'Venice is a place
   in which you never know where dream ends and history begins'.
   
   The book is magical. Definately a book to pick up again and again.



2. The photographs in this book are beautiful and really give the reader a good feeling for Venice. However, the size of the book (something that I did not notice before purchasing) is only 6" x 6". Becuase of this small size, the photographs are not given their true justice. This book would be so much more effective if in coffee table size.



3. I have a few coffee table books on Venice, and none of them hold a candle to the photography in this book, which I originally bought in Venice last time I was there. there is a large hardcover version out there as well, but it may not be available on amazon. The pictures are LUSCIOUS -- if you are a lover of Venice, buy this book.



4. This lovely book combines photos and text, in Italian and English, to remind all lovers of this historic, artistic and romantic place of their enchanted time there. It is a fitting tribute to La Serenissima, by people who know and lover her.



5. I was just in Venice from November 8, 2007 to November 14, 2007, and it was very cold weather, bone-chilling and damp at night, but the city made you forget the cold with its beauty and uniqueness. It is a magical city of dreams, unreal and ethereal. While there I bought this little book with its wonderful evocative color photographs that make the city come to vivid life. These are stunning memorable shots of the city like no other. Venice shrouded in rare snow storms, with flood waters in San Marco Square, scenes at night along the canals, the Bridge of Sighs, the Bacino, water pageants, gondolas, the Rialto Bridge, reflections of the sinking houses on the canals, the Grand Canal, colonnades, baroque churches with great art, quiet secret gardens, cloisters and gardens, the stone wells that are everywhere, the lion symbols, the Doge's Palace. Two glorious churches among a hundred are Santi Giovanni e Paolo and La Basilica della Salute (the dome presently covered in scaffolding).
   Venice is a dying city, but its glories live in your memory forever in these pictures: the library in San Marco Piazza, , the marble statuary, the palazzos, the campos, seagulls, the feast days and Regatta Storica, the celebration of oared boats, Carnevale with its scary costumes and masks, magical sunsets, the city at night, and magnificent fireworks displays. The camera of Frenando Bertuzzi has caught in his lens the shimmering city where life is more fantastic and glorious than in any other city in the world.
   Nine Lives Too Many
   The Daemon in Our Dreams
   The Rice Queen Spy
   Clawed Back from the Dead

1 comments about Insight Guide Scandinavia (Insight Guides Scandinavia).

1. This book is an outstanding guidebook for visitors to Scandinavia. It has maps, lists of places to stay and eat, what to see and even how to find your way around the different cities and countries. I love it!