5 comments about Top 10 Athens (Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides).

1. This book was very helpful. The compactness of the book was great, it was easy to carry and stow in the back pack. The information was very acurate. It was a great benefit to have.



2. This is a very thorough guide for when you have only a day or two to visit. It actually has way more in it than we could possibly see or do.
   Giving the top ten things to see is great for your first visit. It is also great for probably your second or third.
   
   Very helpful, lots of pictures and maps.



3. I am going to Greece later this year, and I bought this to start getting an idea of what to go see and what to expect. This book is great!! It is a great place to start, especially if you don't have alot of time on the trip and want to hit the "big stuff." I thoroughly enjoyed the overviews on all the different places. It gives you the hours, the prices, best times of day to go to places, best restaurants, etc. It even tells you what to avoid. I bought it with a few other books, which go into more detail, but this is the book you carry around with you as you walk around Athens as a reference material. It also has a laminated map of Athens in a pouch in the back of the book. This is a great resource, and it has got me totally stoked about my trip coming up!



4. The guide can be carried around easy, however the map is kind of small. Our Hotel provided us with a better map then the one in the guide.
   One problem was that the opening hours for the musea were incorrect. Archaelogical museum was listed as being open in May till 7:00pm. When we arrived at about 1:30pm we found out that they closed at 3:00pm. They still had 'winter' hours. Opening hours for musea in Athens are kind of random anyway, check before you go.



5. (I wanted to make it 4 stars, but goofed and now can't seem to change it.)
   
   This sounds like a gimmick, but is a surprisingly useful guide, especially given its compact size and low price. The concept of the top 10 list is used to organize information on the most important or interesting things to see. For each item on the top 10 there is a brief paragraph and a marker on a tiny map.
   
   The book is useful for two reasons. First the little paragraphs are well written, giving you key information in a small space. Secondly, they use the top-10 concept in creative ways, so you get the top 10 for Athens of which the Acropolis is number one. But then they give you a top-10 for the Acropolis that allows them to drill down to fairly specific items. Nor are the lists just limited to sites. You get 10 Philosophers and Writers, ten Athenian Legends and ten Greek Inventions among other lists.
   
   The guide also covers items in various Athens' neighborhoods, and the area around Athens. The last section of the book covers a number of travel practicalities.
   
   This guide works well in combination with a much more detailed guide or a series of guides. Use this book to orient you and to stimulate your interest in some specific site, then drill into the details either online or with a specialty guide.

1 comments about London Then and Now (Then & Now).

1. This book contains some beautiful illustrations of London, together with much interesting information. The "then" photos seem to date mostly from 80-150 years ago. I learned several things from the commentaries, even though I lived in or near London for many years, and made every effort to learn about the city! However, the choice of subject for many of the comparisons seems less than ideal. Surely, in a "Then and Now" book, we want to see how much things have changed over the years, don't we? Hence, we don't really need to see locations where the comparative photos prove that very little has changed! For example, do we really need to see "then and now" pictures of Westminster Abbey, just to confirm that it really has NOT changed perceptibly during the past hundred years or so? I don't think so. In a world-class city where so much has changed, via either redevelopment or wanton destruction, there are many fascinating locations that should have been afforded priority in such a book, but which are omitted altogether. Examples: the South Kensington Imperial Institute/Imperial College site (actually mentioned in the book's Introduction), Holland Park House, etc. I can only imagine that the author was forced to draw on a limited stock of "then" photographic material.

5 comments about AA Road Atlas Ireland (Aa Atlases and Maps).

1. I will first comment that I have not yet used this atlas in Ireland so I presume information to be accurate. I ordered this as an extra item to the two fold-out maps I was primarily interested in to qualify for free shipping, but will be leaving the maps behind. The scale (1:200,000 or 1" = 3.16 miles) is 2x the scale of the better of the two fold-out maps (Michelen Ireland #712). I will be using it both for driving and for reference in traveling by bus/train. At 8-1/4" x 11-5/8" x 1/4" thick it fits nicely in the outer sleeve of my backpack. I find the Michelen Ireland #712 fold-out map, while a nicely detailed map, somewhat thick and cumbersome to fold. This bound atlas handles nicely.



2. This atlas was absolutely useless during our trip to Ireland. It did NOT provide detailed maps of the cities, and the layout and organization was horrible! The free map we got from the Rental Car Agency was of more use than this atlas. Do NOT buy this product!



3. I am planning a trip to Ireland where I will rent a car to tour the places I wish to visit. This promises to help navigate the country.



4. AA Road Atlas: Ireland (Road Atlas)Just returned from a road trip in Ireland with my girlfriends, this was invaluable, very easy to read, a must far all attempting to drive the roads in Ireland!



5. This atlas is inferior to the Ordnance Survey Atlas (ISBN 978-1-905511-40-2). We bought the AA atlas before our Ireland trip and found we needed the Ordnance Survey atlas once we got there.

5 comments about Italy For Dummies (Dummies Travel).

1. ITALY FOR DUMMIES is so helpful. It's arranged so you can easily find famous sites, art, night spots, restaurants, discos and pubs, shopping, as well as practical how-to-get-where information for all the major tourist destinations and maps of many of the major cities. There are even sections to help you negotiate an upscale Italian menu as well as a pizza menu, which, believe me, is very useful to those of us who don't speak Italian. The excellent sidebar on Italian ice cream (which is probably the best ice cream in the world) recommends some of the most popular flavors, including my favorites bacio (hazelnut chocolate) and stracciatella (chocolate chip)! Try a dip of two or three flavors on your cone-that's the Italian way. Believe me, you'll walk it off. The book even tells you how to toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain Italian style. I highly recommend ITALY FOR DUMMIES, whether you are a first time traveler to Italy, or you've been there a half dozen times as I have. The book is great at telling you where all the great art is (some of the major works at each museum), how to get tickets and how long the lines will probably be. The book's weakness is that it doesn't help you understand the art--it's 5-word to 1-sentence descriptions of paintings and sculptures don't really do the job. It would be great if they offered a book called Italian Art for Dummies. They don't, so I got the next best thing, ART HISTORY FOR DUMMIES. I highly recommend the chapter on Ancient Rome, which is great for helping you understand the whole span of Roman art, architecture and history (and really fun and interesting to read!) and of course the Early and High Renaissance chapter, which is magnificent, the Mannerism chapter (which tells about one of the truly great off the beaten-path art sites, Palazzo Te in Mantova, aka Mantua, which isn't mentioned at all in Italy for Dummies), the Italian Baroque, and the really lively section on the Italian Futurists (who were around during the early 20th century). I packed both ART HISTORY FOR DUMMIES and ITALY FOR DUMMIES in my suitcase when I went to Venice, Florence, Rome and Mantua for ten days over the Christmas Holidays. Both of these books made my trip so much richer and more interesting than my previous five Italian adventures. I never saw so much of Italy in so short a time--I don't mean in terms of quantity but quality. These books help you to get inside the Italian experience much more deeply.



2. We found Italy for Dummies to be invaluable to our trip planning and in use on the trip. It was full of useful advice generally, and specifically, the maps and hotel and restaurant recommendations were apt and accurate. The Amazon online access was especially valuable, both because I was able to cut and paste (and print) custom maps specific to our plans before our trip, AND ON the trip because my fiance left the book on the kitchen table when we left. A best buy all round!



3. What I liked...super concise review of Italian history, nice "top 10" lists at the end; good basic information.
   
   What I didn't like...this particular book was kind of a disappointment in comparison to other "Dummies" travel books I have used. I found the London and Paris "Dummies" books absolutely invaluable. Perhaps because this book covers an entire country, rather than an individual city, did I find it to be much too general. I also found the English/Italian dictionary at the end to be really lacking. I did not expect it to be by any means extensive; however, the 2-page listing in a "Time Out" guide that I bought was much more meaningful in the choice of helpful words.
   
   Perhaps it is because I have done a bit more traveling, much of the basic information just seemed to be that...much too basic. What might be nice is if the "Dummies" series had just a book on "travel tips for Dummies," and then omitted a lot of that very basic content from these location guides. It would allow room to make the location guide much more comprehensive and meaningful.
   
   If this is your first trip to Europe, then by all means, this is a great book. But if you have been to Europe before and are comfortable with your basic travel know-how, you might want to look elsewhere.



4. What a great book! I have tabbed sections, highlighted information, and written notes in the margins. If you are looking for any information about the history of this great culture to where to eat in Rome, this is the book for you.



5. I received this book very quickly and gathered some important information for my trip to Italy.

No comments about Fodor's France 2009 (Fodor's Gold Guides).

No comments about Europe by Eurail 2009: Touring Europe by Train (Europe By Eurail).

1 comments about The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. I travel to Europe a couple times a year for business -without a corporate budget! I needed a guide book that would help me find reasonable places to stay and the main sites to see in various European countries during my trips. (I rarely go to the same city twice.)
   
   The Rough Guides are GREAT guide books. They are not for the backpacker crowd like Lonely Planet tends to be, nor the rich. Rough Guides cater to that middle crowd - me. Their single country or city guides go into great detail on each location. Don't miss these guidebooks if you are traveling extensively in one country. However, that's too much for my 2-3 day visits. That's where the "Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget" comes in.
   
   The Guide covers 30 countries and appears to be an update of the The Rough Guide to Europe 2006 (Rough Guide Travel Guides). It gives a brief history, tips on culture, hotel and dining recommendations. It lists details on the top sightseeing sites. The photos and maps are better than many other publishers' single-country guide books. On my recent trips I found I was just as informed as my colleagues who invested (weight being a larger consideration than cost) in a single country guidebook.
   
   "The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget" has plenty of information for the business or limited time traveler. If you are going to spend a week in a country sightseeing upgrade to a single country guidebook.

3 comments about The Curse of the Romanovs.

1. THE CURSE OF THE ROMANOVS by Staton Rabin is an absolutely spell-binding story of Alexei Romanov and the Russian Revolution.
   
   The story begins in Russia in 1916, where Alexei Romanov is the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne. As a hemophiliac, Alexei cannot stop bleeding, and the only person who can seem to heal him is Father Grigory, otherwise known as Rasputin. So many of the Russian people despise Father Grigory and spread gossip about his drinking and womanizing, but Alexei's mother, the Tsarina, comforts Alexei by telling him that these are all lies and that Father Grigory is their dear friend.
   
   Alexei believes his mother, until one night when he hears a conversation between his mother and Father Grigory that challenges everything he has been told. Not knowing where to turn, Alexei confides in his cousin, who decides to murder Father Grigory. But killing Father Grigory is not as easy as it appears, and when Alexei fears for his own life, he flees to the year 2010, using a method that Father Grigory himself taught Alexei.
   
   In the future, Alexei meets a distant relative, Varda Rosenberg, who is currently working on a cure for hemophilia. When Alexei learns about the Russian Revolution and the fate of his family, he is determined to travel back to the past and rescue them from a horrible death at the hands of the Bolsheviks. With Varda's help, Alexei travels back into the past in a desperate attempt to save his family, his honor, and his way of life. But will he be able to change the course of history?
   
   Staton Rabin somehow mixes the genres of science fiction and historical fiction to create a novel unlike any I have ever read. So much of the story is fact-based that you will find yourself believing every word. Rabin captures the voice of a young Alexei so well, as the book is written in diary form. At the end of the novel, author's notes clear up any misconceptions and separate fact from fiction.
   
   So many stories have been written about the Romanov family, including the Disney movie Anastasia (Family Fun Edition w/Bartok the Magnificent). But Rabin's take on this famous story is so different than all of the others, it is definitely worth reading!
   
   Reviewed by: Amber Gibson



2. This book is a work of art! It combines science fiction, non-fiction and fiction to create a wonderful tale, another perspective of the Romanovs! This book is not just for teens!



3. As the Romanov family is one of favorite subjects in history I picked up this book. While it was a great story (historical fiction account), I didn't like that the author towards the end of the book portrayed Rasputin in a good light. However, the author did a great job and should be commended on all her hard work researching the family and everything surrounding them during their time.

No comments about Frommer's Iceland (Frommer's Complete).

5 comments about The Time Thief (The Gideon Trilogy).

1. Even better than the first book. The Tar Man is an intriguing and complex character.



2. This series is INCREDIBLE! The author, characters, the plots, resolutions are intricate, detailed and fully developed. HOWEVER, BE AWARE that each book in the series has 2 published versions/titles. The first book is "Gideon the Cutpurse" (British version) and "The Time Travelers" (American version). The second book in the trilogy is "The Tar Man" (British version) and "The Time Thief" (American version). So far, the 3rd book is entitled "Lord Luxon" but I do not know if this is the British or American version, or what the other title will be. I prefer the British titles and British versions (the hardcover British "Gideon the Cutpurse" version is AWESOME and creative).
   
   Once I stopped buying the same books but different versions, I absolutely loved this trilogy. It is well worth the money and the wait. This is SO MUCH MORE than just another time-travel story. I would even suggest it for people who don't usually go for time travel themes -- the history, power struggles and choices between good vs. bad and right vs. wrong are truly deep and relevant yet not overdone; Just for the simple plot alone, this one's a keeper -- and yes, I've read the Harry Potter series, and Linda Buckley-Archer's Gideon series is well worth the comparison. You won't regret it. For both children and adults alike.



3. When Kate Dyer and Peter Schock accidentally traveled back in time to the year 1763 --- after an antigravity machine malfunctioned --- they were befriended by Gideon Seymour, a gentleman who is a former cutpurse. Gideon became their guide as they adjusted to living in the 18th century, as well as rescuer when they met the feared Tar Man and the notorious Carrick Gang. While the overall experience shocked and awed the two young time travelers, they still had hope that they would return together to their lives in the 21st century.
   
   However, when a rescue attempt from Dr. Dyer was interrupted, Kate returned to the 21st century, leaving Peter behind. Kate feels guilty for what happened and wants to go back to save her friend immediately. For Kate's family and Dr. Andrea Pirretti, Dr. Dyer's lab partner, there are other matters to contend with. There are the growing questions of Inspector Wheeler, who is strongly suspicious of the children's disappearance, and the NASA scientists' activities. Then there's the antigravity machine-turned-time-travel device and its potential consequences. Dr. Dyer is concerned about getting Peter safely back to the 21st century, whereas Dr. Pirretti is more worried about the negative effects of time travel, particularly if it was used for sinister intentions.
   
   Kate is determined to bring Peter back, so she seeks out the most unlikely yet important person for help --- Peter's father. When they get back to the 18th century, though, they quickly realize that they are not in 1763, but in 1792! Luckily for them, a man comes forward, introducing himself as Joshua Seymour (Gideon's half-brother who sailed to America), and offers to help. Kate is relieved to meet Joshua, but as time goes by, she begins to question who he truly is. The adventure intensifies as the trio visits old friends, makes new acquaintances, and travels to France in the midst of the French Revolution. Unfortunately for Kate, new problems arise when she begins to experience strange symptoms.
   
   Meanwhile, the Tar Man is intent on making a name for himself in 21st-century London. He employs a teenaged girl named Anjail as his guide and is determined to get his way no matter what, sometimes with hilarious results. However, it's not all relatively harmless mischief, especially when the Tar Man hatches a scheme in order to strike it rich and perhaps change history.
   
   Strange alliances and secrets act as catalysts, driving the characters and readers to a stunning conclusion that will leave them with more questions than answers. THE TIME THIEF is a page-turning adventure that features intrigue and action, along with moments of humor and emotional turmoil, bringing the diverse characters and the situations in which they find themselves (no matter the time period) to life.
   
   --- Reviewed by Sarah Sawtelle



4. A thief from the year 1763 finds himself in the 21st century. Just think of all the bad things he can do with the technology now available to him.
   
   This is the second book in the series and keeping track of who is where is getting complicated! This starts out with Kate and Mr. Schock traveling back in time to rescue his son, Peter. The only problem lies in the fact that instead of ending up in 1763, they end up 29 years later! They do find Peter but he is unwilling to admit who he is. Plus, the anti-gravity machine has become damaged and is no longer a working machine. NOW how do they get home?
   
   The Tar Man, the thief, finds himself someone willing to teach him about the technology of the 21st century and who is just as willing to do unscrupulous things. All this time travel has the NASA people concerned about the effect on our history and Kate finds that time travel HAS had an affect on her.
   
   We meet French aristocrats, learn how technology allows the Tar Man to gain wealth and that there might be parallel worlds.
   
   Gerald Doyle, as the reader, uses his talents to create different voices so the listener can tell who is speaking. His inflections are wonderful and you can tell English characters from French ones because of this. His ability to do this makes listening easy.
   
   I can't wait for the third book to come out.



5. My nearly 8 year old son was so in love with the first title, he could barely wait to get his hands on this copy! I'm so glad I found it on Amazon, because you can't beat such a low price on a hardcover. I have read this when he isn't busy with it, and I must say, the writing is brilliant. The details are rich and wonderful, great depth to the characters, and my son loves the contrast of past and modern times. Definitely up there with the Harry Potter series. Highly recommend!