DK Eyewitness Travel Guides

I have become a big fan of the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides; Marsha and I have used them for Italy, Greece, Ireland, and Great Britain. They're generally well organized, well-indexed, easy to use, and fun to look at and chockful of information both helpful and interesting. This last factor makes them useful for travel planning, time on the ground at the destination and for reminiscing. They're so good for reminiscing that we bought the Denmark book years after being there.

The only drawbacks are the cost -- you're buying for high quality paper and high quality color photography, the weight, and the fact that they're not available for more countries. After you've been walking for hours, you can feel the weight of heavy books, but I was disappointed that they don't publish one for Romania, where I'm headed in a couple months.

When we were talking yesterday with friends planning an Italian vacation, we recommended the books. Unsurprisingly, they were already familiar with the series and didn't need to borrow our Italy volume, as they're already intending to pick up their own copy.

Padua / Padova