Product Description

This brand new Insight Regional Guide to the Italian Lakes features inspiring full-colour photography alongside comprehensive coverage of all the lakes, such as Lake Garda, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, and many more, as well as the main cities; Brescia, Milan, Bergamo and Verona. A fully-indexed touring map highlights eight of the best drives to take in order to see the very best this region has to offer, from fabulous lake and mountain views to castles, villas and palaces. Each tour is timed and clearly marked on the map for ease of use. The guide is durable and highly portable, making it an ideal companion for your trip and also a wonderful souvenir. With this guide you also receive a FREE HotelClub loyalty card, offering GBP15 off your first hotel booking plus great savings of up to 60% on over 30,000 hotels across 120 countries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71305 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Fab book for a recent holiday to Lake Como
This book is great and I used it on a recent holiday to Lake Como - it has a friendly and informative writing style and loads of pictures to give you a real flavour of what's to come on your holiday. The map that comes with it is also great - especially if you have your own car while you're away on your holiday as it recommends drives around a number of areas. The only downside to the book (and all others that cover a 'region') is that it can't drill into the detail in any one place although it does a very good job of pointing out the key attractions of each location in the Italian Lakes area. I took 2 books on the area on holiday, the other being the Rough Guide to the Italian Lakes which is much more text driven and focuses on alot of useful, practical information. Between both books I got everything I needed to ensure that I covered everything I wanted to while away.

Insight Italian Lakes Guide
Not a bad purchase - but I found that I really needed another guide to supplement this insight one to give me the fullest details of the lago Maggiore location we visited. The piece on Stresa, where we were staying, was adequate but not detailed enough to my mind. In short, a worthwhile purchase (at an Amazon cost of about 50% of the publishers' price).

No insight whatsover, you're better off just going to tourist info
This book is singularly the most useless and ill-researched guide book I have ever consulted. I am just back from a trip around Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, and frankly, the majority of the advice in this book, thin as it is, is best avoided. Bellagio is hardly a "three star" destination, its just a grotesque tourist trap. It would have been helpful if the guide had actually pointed out that its practically impossible to swim anywhere on Lake Como (because of the absence of beaches and because its quite dirty and smells of marine diesel from all the motorised lake traffic). That would have actually been a bit of insight.

My personal favourite recommendation by this book was an eatery in Locarno, only one of three of four that it recommended in the city - Casa Del Populo. Aside from the use of tinned vegetables (mushrooms and artichokes) on a pizza made in the Ticino (a positively Mediterranean climate with abundant fresh vegetables and markets), I do object to be charged CHF10 (about £6) for a bottle of San Pellegrino. Maybe the Insight reviewers make their status known in advance so they get better treatment than us average joes when they eat out?

Genuinely, save your money, do a bit of research beforehand on the internet, and then pop in to the tourist info when you arrive and ask your hosts in the region. Or just follow your nose. You are bound to have more insight inherently than any information you will glean from this superficial and lazily thrown together guide book.