Bringing Rick's books to Rome and Florence

When we took a multi-country tour I took my book without the pages that I didn't need to Kinkos, where they spiral bound it, and added plastic covers. It was so much lighter. We are going to Italy in the fall and I plan to do this again, because a side benefit that this has is that the book lays flat, which is so handy when you are using a tray on a plane, train, bus, etc. We do have the advantage of having 2 books, however. Have a great trip. Carry your books proudly...some places may gave us a "better deal" when they saw you using RS books.

I've done it both ways and when I got back I regretted I didn't have an intact book to refer to after the trip. His 2008s are on the thinner, lighter paper.

I see MANY people carrying around Rick's books - especially in St. Peter's Square. I always say hi and ask if they need directions! So I say would yes, bring the book!

Ciao,
Ron

I have always taken the entire book.

As stated before, once you try & be selective, you always miss/forget something.

You didn't mention what books, but here's what I do... If they are the separate Rome and Florence books, then I take the entire book. I usually pass them on to travellers without Rick's books at the end of my stay in each place. If it's the Italy book and I only need two sections, I cut out the sections. Even the sections get recognized by other travellers and proprietors who give discounts for the book.

Whenever booking a hotel I always mentioned in my e-mail Rick's rate if there was one for having his book and the hotel would always confirm the price back with Rick's rate included. I always brought the whole book on my trips. Always something new I wanted to look up once I was actually there.

I did the "tear out the pages" once and regretted it. I love having my old guidebooks and refer back to them frequently. I always pack my books last and tuck them in on the sides and in the pockets. They do add weight, but I find myself reading them over and over again while I'm there.

I also take the entire book.Not only is it nice to have it intact upon return but many times other people need information from the book that you can help with.

Just returned from 3.5 wks visiting UK/NL/FR/IT and used Rick's 'Best of Europe 2007' + maps/other guides. Left our 'BoE 2007' at our last stop; Rome. Don't 'rip & tear', keep the one(s) you want to use intact and leave in Europe for other travellers at your last hotel. I'm told there's discounts when 'flashing' R's books but it's minimal and not worth the effort (IMO).

Hi....we carried our Rome book with us wherever we went. There seems to be an entire subculture of Rick readers out there. Seeing other people with the book was almost like seeing friends. It was definitely a conversation starter. We all felt like we were on a first name basis with Rick. We were also happy we carried the entire book with us, because there were some days where plans changed and we had the book with us and was able to adapt the days plans. Good luck and have fun.

I just returned from 2 weeks in italy and i would say carry the book...it was a godsend to me the entire trip and just like the other post i saw people everywhere carrying it...and instant bond with traveling friends

I've been using Rick's Italy book for planning this trip. Yes, the paper is like Bible pages thin, but, the city books have all the wslking tours and museum tours that the Country book does not have. So I'm taking 3 city books (so much for paking light) with me on the trip. Of course I'll only have to carry 1 city book during the day.

Hi Suzanne,

Instead of taking out the pages that you need and carrying loose leaf paper/getting it binded - I used an exacto knife to cut out all of the towns that I WASN'T going to. Hense, my Rick Steves Italy book only has Venice, Florence, Siena, Cinque Terre, and Rome in it, and thus was considerably lighter for packing around throughout the day while sightseeing.

Yes, it kind of sucks that I don't have all the other sections to joy read in preparation for a new trip - but when I'm ready to take that next trip, I'll just spring for the updated book. Good luck!!

We took pages from the Italy country book and had them spiral bound at Kinko's as others have stated. We did the same thing for France. It lightened our load and it was nice to be able to open the book flat. I included the covers on my abbreviated books to preserve it a bit more. I'm not sure the extra running around on the last days before departure was worth it in the end, but I never regretted having a smaller book.

Instead of destroying the books, I suggest to make copies of the pages you need. To save even more space, I would scan those pages and print them on both sides of the paper. If I need to have phone numbers and addresses with me , I write them down on a sheet of paper, usually I only need one. I did this last year when I went to NYC, I had one sheet of paper with all the museums' phone numbers, addresses, directions and hours. It worked very well.