Good maps of Venice & Florence

I have always had good luck with the TI and the free maps from the hotels. Most good book stores will have a map section. I use the folded laminate maps. If you use a paper map a lot it will n ot hold up. Just go to the bookstore and find one you like.

You can get a really great map at the Barnes and Noble. It is small but folds out big. It is called the Pocket Pilot. I have one for Rome, Florence and Venice. They will fit in your pocket but have a great amount of detail. They cost about 6 dollars each.

Donna

I second what Donna said. The Pocket Pilot maps are the best I've found. Barnes & Noble carries them. They're about 3" x 3" and are waterproof. There is city center detail as well as metro on the flipside. There is also a public transportation map on them. They have them for Florence, Venice, and Rome in Italy.

The B&B (Berndtson & Beerndtson) City Streets map of Florence is a good map for walking Florence. It's laminated, as Frank recommends above, and has a city center scale of 1:7000, good for navigating on foot.

But I don't know if you can buy it here or onliine, I got mine in Florence some time ago (it's holding up well).

Marcus - DK Eyewitness Travel Guides are very good for info. as well as the maps they have. Available at any book stores or online.

A lot of hotels will furnish a small, pocket-sized foldout map.

We've found the Streetwise Maps to be the best. They are available at Barnes & Noble and Borders, as well as http://www.streetwisemaps.com Maps that TIs and hotels give you can be hit or miss. In Venice, we got two other parties of tourists "un-lost", because their map wasn't complete, unlike our Streetwise map.

I second the recommendation for the Streetwise maps. We have them for Venice, Rome and Florence. They fold up nicely and are laminated which helps them to last longer. We have used them for several trips to Italy and loaned them to our neighbors for their trip. They were readily available at out local Barnes and Noble store. I believe they can also be purchased through Amazon.com.

I second the recommendation for DK Eyewitness Travel Guides books. They contain some excellent walking tours that will take you to parts of the city that tourists rarely frequent.

Streetwise maps are also very good.